Tag: Colorado Labor Wars (WFM) of 1903-1904

Hellraisers Journal: From the Appeal to Reason: Wayland for Debs Campaign; Colorado Republicans; Georgia Democrats

Janet RayeEugene Victor Debs
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Quote EVD, Prosperity, LW p1, July 1, 1919—————

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday September 6, 1904
Comrade Wayland Supports Debs Campaign vs Republicans and Democrats

From the Appeal to Reason of Sept 3, 1904:

Comrade Wayland Does His Part for Socialist Candidates

In this week’s Appeal to Reason, Editor J. A. Wayland  describes how he has been working, on his own time, for the Socialist Party candidates and asks the Appeal Army to do the same:

EVD n Hanford for Pres SPA, AtR p6, Sept 3, 1904

WILL YOU HELP
———-

Last week I rode sixty-five miles, circulating Appeals and pamphlets, about Girard [Kansas]. One evening after work I made twenty miles and left an Appeal and two pamphlets at every farm house. Don’t feel to dignified to do such work, and the most humble can do it and by it do just as effective work as the most brilliant speakers. I intend to keep this up during the entire campaign, giving fresh literature at each covering of the same roads. I do this after my day’s work in the office is done. Ten thousand men doing this two or fours hours a week would make a tremendous breach in capitalism this fall.

J. A. WAYLAND

Good Christians of Colorado Fear Growth of Socialism

The Appeal to Reason reports that ministers throughout Colorado have been receiving the following letter:

Letter re Socialism v Christianity by Rev, AtR p2, Sept 3, 1904

The above letter was written to a New Castle, Colo., minister. A similar letter was sent to every minister in the state of Colorado. You will note that it is written on stationery furnished and paid for by the people of Colorado. It is by this means that the ruling class hope to further enslave the working class. The Mine Owners’ Association and the Citizens’ Alliance are flooding Colorado with literature in a vain attempt to stem the tide which they realize will soon engulf them. The Rev. Mr. Malone is very much afraid that Socialism will sweep aside the time honored institution of private property-and by private property in this case the gentleman has reference to the great productive properties of the state-the mines-the railroads-the mills and factories. Mr. Malone is right. Socialism proposes to destroy private property in these things, which are essential to the collective welfare and vest the title in society collectively. Exploitation will then cease.
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Hellraisers Journal: Duluth Labor World: Hastings, Colorado-“Mother Jones Says Rockefeller Oppresses the Coal Miners”

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, CFI Owns Colorado, re 1903 Strikes UMW WFM, Ab Chp 13, 1925—————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday February 7, 1904
Hastings, Colorado – Mother Jones Exposes Rockefeller’s “Sunday School Methods”

From the Duluth Labor World of February 6, 1904:

MOTHER JONES
Says Rockefeller Oppresses the Coal Miners.

Mother Jones Gives 500 Dollars to CO Strikers, LW p4, Feb 6, 1904

Hastings, Colo., Feb. 5.-[Mother Jones, the miners’ friend, who is now going up and down among the striking miners in Colorado, says:]

Rockefeller’s mining company cleared $39,000 [*] last year, and every dollar of it was wrung form the miners.

At some of these mining camps a miner is not even allowed to bring a pound of butter from the outside. He is compelled to buy everything at the company’s store. Every man who comes to the mines to work must be searched, and when he goes to visit a friend outside the camp an armed guard goes with him.

What would a Chicago workingman think if he had to pay 90 cents for a quart of syrup that cost at wholesale $1.25 a gallon? What would he think if his employer taxed him a dollar a month for a doctor whether he needed one or not? What would he think if he was obliged to pay his employer 50 cents a month for a preacher?

“Yet such are Mr. Rockefeller’s Sunday school methods of conducting his mining business in Colorado,” says Mother Jones.

[Emphasis added. Newsclip added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: John Mitchell Expects Peace in Southern Colorado, States Mother Jones and Best Organizers Are on the Spot

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones re North n South Coal Miners Separate Settle, Ab p99, 1925—————

Hellraisers Journal – Friday December 11, 1903
Chicago, Illinois – John Mitchell Expects Peace in Southern Colorado

From the Chicago Inter Ocean of December 9, 1903:

John Mitchel Pres UMWA, fr Organized Labor p6, 1903

Speculation that John Mitchell would fire Mother Jones for her part in delaying the separate settlement of the northern coal miners has not yet been realized. The following is an interview published in the Inter Ocean:

John Mitchell, president of the United Mine Workers, is at McCoy’s hotel. He came directly from Colorado.

“I regard the situation there as hopeful,” he said. “I believe a settlement will be reached, and I do not expect to have to return there. ‘Mother’ Jones and some of our best organizers are on the spot.

“The public mind, I believe, is somewhat confused concerning the troubles in the silver mines in Colorado. Many think that the United Mine Workers are concerned with them. Our men are coal miners only, and have had nothing to do with bringing about martial law. We have secured satisfactory settlements in the northern part of the state, and expect solid peace soon in the southern.”

[Emphasis added.]

Mitchell’s lack of concern for the metal miners is stunning. This lack of concern by Mitchell for these striking metal miners, now oppressed under military despotism, is another bone of contention between Mother Jones and her boss. Mother has shown all the Solidarity possible with the metal miners; she advocates unceasingly for unity between the United Mine Workers of America and the Western Federation of Miners.

—————

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Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: “The Shame of San Diego” by Hartwell S. Shippey, Part I

Janet RayeFree Speech Fights
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Quote EGF, re Spk FSF, ISR p618, Jan 1910—————

Hellraisers Journal – Friday May 3, 1912
“The Shame of San Diego” by Hartwell S. Shippey, Part I

From the International Socialist Review of May 1912:

The Shame of San Diego

by HARTWELL S. SHIPPEY

[Part I of II]

San Diego FSF Balz, Shippey, Gue, ISR p720, May 1912

SPAT upon, cursed, reviled; the victims of lying calumny and vile vituperation; the recipients of farcical indignities on the part of the legal lackeys of an organized oligarchy; beaten, kicked, clubbed, starved by brass-bound blue-coated Cossacks and vigilantes, the scorned and despised members of the I. W. W. hold San Diego-on-the-bay in their grasp.

Laughing, only passively resistant, singing their songs of solidarity, these homeless, propertyless, countryless “hoboes,” incarcerated in the iron-bound bastiles of smiling San Diego, are clamoring not for physical comforts or luxuries, but for mental food, the works of Marx, Spencer, Renan, Rousseau and Dietzgen.

Even without definite knowledge of the rhythmic tread of the thousands marching to their rescue, these modern Crusaders, buoyed up by their indomitable idealism, secure in the virtue of their cause, have that great faith in the loyalty of their kind to feel, if they cannot know, that theirs will be the victory.

Rivaling the Coeur d’Alene and Colorado, the San Diego fight for free speech and free press will enter the pages of revolutionary history as a stupendous example of red-blooded men heroically enduring every conceivable form of “Man’s [perfect?] self-control in the face of fiendishly inhumanity to man” and preserving brutal persecution.

San Diego may congratulate herself on being the instrument by which two socially valuable bits of education have been given to the world. First the world has come to know the extremes to which an overbearing despotism will go in its efforts to crush labor; and second, it is being demonstrated that, under certain conditions, revolutionary and conservative branches of the labor movement will line up together solidly and unitedly.

For, know ye, the battle is not primarily one fought for a short hundred yards of city street, nor yet for free speech and press alone. It is, at bottom, a struggle on the part of labor for the privilege of organizing and educating its kind to the end that the products of labor shall be rendered unto labor, and that better living conditions for the toilers shall make of this modern miasma of human misery a more fit state for human beings to occupy.

What precipitated this struggle in the non-commercial city nestling on the hills above a beautiful bay with the blue mountains rising in the distance?

California will, barring intervening preventatives, hold two great fairs in 1915, one at San Francisco and one at San Diego. A great amount of labor will be employed in instituting and conducting these fairs. Organized labor, as represented by the A. F. of L., insists on having a voice in determining the rate of wages it will receive and the conditions under which it will work. Organized capital, dominated by the M. and M., declares that IT shall be the sole arbiter in reference to these questions. Organized capital insists that the open shop shall prevail in California; while organized labor realizes that the closed shop is its life-principle. Knowing that it cannot prevail against the unions when there are no idle men to take their places, the M. and M., controlling the press of the country as it does, has systematically published misinformation throughout the country to the effect that jobs are plentiful in California-to the end that jobless men may flood the labor market of the coast and imperil the power of the unions.

The chief function of the Industrial Workers of the World on the coast has been, and is, an education of the unemployed to an understanding of the interests of labor that prevents the out-of-works from acting in the selfish and cowardly role of strike-breaker or scab. The M. and M. recognizes this menace to their plans and strikes at the vitals of this education by an attempted suppression of free speech and press, these forms of freedom being imperative to the educators of the floating population.

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Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for February 1912, Part II: Four Score Hard Winters of Labor’s Heroine Described by Lawrence Todd

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, No Abiding Place, WDC Hse Com Testimony, June 14, 1910—————

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday March 28, 1912
Mother Jones News Round-Up for February 1912, Part II
The Four Score Hard Winters of Labor’s Heroine by Lawrence Todd

From The Tacoma Times of February 14, 1912:

Four Score Hard Winters Has Mother Jones Seen,
and She Is a Heroine in Labor’s Ranks Still
———-

BY LAWRENCE TODD.

Mother Jones, Tacoma Tx p3, Feb 14, 1912

“Where do you live, ‘”Mother Jones?” asked the chairman of a Congressional investigating committee of a little old woman in rusty black.

She had kindly, determined Irish features and the most piercing and confusing of blue Irish eyes. Brave, kindly, faith-inspiring eyes the old woman had, and a motherly way of speaking when she was not aroused. But this chairman was trying to defend the steel barons from the charge of enslaving their men.

“I live in the United States, sorr,” she replied.

“But where-in what state have you a home?”

“Where the big thieves are wringing their dollars out of the blood and bone of my poor, miserable people, sorr,” came back the reply, in a voice like that of an accusing judge. “Sometimes it is among the slaves of the Alabama iron mines; sometimes with the gold and silver miners of Arizona, where the Southern Pacific has fastened itself on their throats; sometimes with the boys on the northern copper range, and often in the coal miners’ shacks in Pennsylvania or West Virginia. Where you send your militia where men are shot and women driven from their homes at night by armed bullies, there I stay.”

“Mother” Jones is nearly 80 years of age. What she told the corporation congressman is literally true. For more than a generation she has been an organizer for the Western Federation of Miners and for their brothers, the United Mine Workers. Strikes she has seen and taken a part in, since she was a little girl in a southern cotton mill. Once she led 1,500 women of the coal miners’ families against a Colorado sheriff and his deputies. The sheriff for once was driven back from the strikers picket line.

At another crisis, when the children of the Philadelphia factories were crying for protection, “Mother” Jones shocked the community by organizing a great parade of 7,000 crippled and maimed boys and girls, ragged and pale, underfed and haggard as factory children always become, to march through the streets of the fashionable shopping quarter. Always she is making a fight against social wrongs. Usually she is dramatic about it. Always her warm heart and her fearless tongue, and her white forehead that has more than once been pressed by the muzzle of a deputy’s gun, endear her to the wretched people who spend their days in factories and mines.

Just now the miners have lent “Mother” to the striking stoop employes of the Harriman railroads in the western country, where she is making appeals to the women to do picket duty. Incidentally she visited the convention of the California State Building Trades council at Fresno, and urged the delegates to stand by their officials, Tveitmoe and Johannsen, indicted in connection with the alleged dynamiting conspiracy.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for February 1912, Part II: Four Score Hard Winters of Labor’s Heroine Described by Lawrence Todd” →

Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for February 1912, Part I: Found in Colorado, Wyoming, Illinois, Ohio and Indianapolis, Indiana

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones Master Class Creates Violence, LA Rec p4, Dec 21, 1911—————

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday March 27, 1912
Mother Jones News Round-Up for February 1912, Part I
Found in Colorado, Wyoming, Illinois, Ohio and Indiana

From the Appeal to Reason of February 3, 1912:

Mother Jones, Tacoma Tx p3, Feb 14, 1912The California Building Trades convention [of late January] unanimously adopted a resolution calling for a conference between the Socialist Party, the state A. F. of L. and the State Building Trades, with a view to united political action for the working class. Job Harriman, Mother Jones and Alexander Irvine were among the speakers at the convention.

—————

[Photograph added.]

From the Denver Rocky Mountain News of February 7, 1912:

 

ROOSEVELT ‘MONKEY CHASER,’
DECLARES ‘MOTHER’ JONES
———-

“WALL STREET WILL ELECT HIM NEXT PRESIDENT,”
SAYS WOMAN LABOR LEADER.
———-

That Theodore Roosevelt is a “monkey chaser,” but will be elected the next president of the United States despite the fact, is the opinion of “Mother” Jones, who arrived in Denver yesterday to investigate labor conditions.

“I have no doubt that Roosevelt will be the next president,” she says. “Of course, I have no use for him, but he plays to the galleries, and a Wall street will elect him.

“He is the fellow who sent guns to murder the working men in the strike of 1904 [Telluride, November 1903].

“Taft is right in with him, but I think that Taft is more of a gentleman than Roosevelt is.”

“Mother” Jones will make an address at Eagle hall tomorrow night, under the auspices of the Western Federation of Miners.

———-

From Denver’s United Labor Bulletin of February 8, 1912:

 

“MOTHER” JONES SPEAKS TO
FEDERATED SHOPMEN

Strike Is Already Won, Says “Mother”
Many Entertainments for Benefit of Strikers

“Mother” Jones spoke to a large crowd at Eagles’ hall Wednesday night, and during her address but one man left the hall. She spoke to the striking Federated Shopmen, and her discourse covered a period of two and one-half hours. “Mother” Jones has passed through the entire life of the labor movement in the United States. The daughter of a miner and later a miner’s wife, she was reared and spent her life in the labor movement. She has a wonderful memory, and in her address she followed the evolution of the labor movement in the United States, and told of how labor has been exploited by capital to the detriment of the human race.

“Mother” Jones has been traveling over the Harriman system, and said that the strike of the shopmen was won now, and it was only a matter of time until the roads will sign up. She said that on one occasion where a train on which she was riding had a nine-hour schedule it took the train thirty-six hours to make the trip.

From Rawlins Republican (Wyoming) of February 8, 1912:

 

MOTHER JONES HERE

Last Thursday evening in the Danish hall Mother Jones spoke to the striking shopmen and several of their friends. The crowd was very enthusiastic and frequently applauded the speaker.

Mother Jones is a strong and vigorous speaker and does not hesitate to call a spade a spade. She assured the strikers that she was confident that a settlement of their troubles would be made in the near future, advised them to remain firm in their demands and not desert the cause for which they had been fighting for so long. She urged the men strongly to remain away from the saloons and gambling houses and prophesied that if this was not done much discredit would be thrown upon the cause they represent.

As is usual in labor leaders, she strongly denounced the capitalist class and even took a shot at several of she religious organizations.

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Hellraisers Journal: “The General Strike” by William D. Haywood -from Speech at New York City, March 1911, Part II

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Make Cp Suffer Pocket Book, GS by BBh, ISR p681, May 1911—————

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday May 18, 1911
“The General Strike” -from Speech by Big Bill Haywood, Part II

From the International Socialist Review of May 1911:

HdLn General Strike GS by BBH, ISR p680, May 1911

[Part II of II]

BBH, ISR p68, Aug 1910And in Wales it was my good fortune to be there, not to theorize but to take part in the general strike among the coal miners. Previous to my coming, or in previous strikes, the Welsh miners had been in the habit of quitting work, carrying out their tools, permitting the mine managers to run the pumps, allowing the engine winders to remain at work, carrying food down to the horses, keeping the mines in good shape, while the miners themselves were marching from place to place singing their oldtime songs, gathering on the meeting grounds of the ancient Druids and listening to the speeches of the labor leaders; starving for weeks contentedly, and on all occasions acting most peaceably; going back to work when they were compelled to by starvation.

But this last strike was an entirely different one. It was like the shoemakers’ strike in Brooklyn. Some new methods had been injected into the strike. I had spoken there on a number of occasions previous to the strike being inaugurated, and I told them of the methods that we adopted in the west, where every man employed in and around the mine belongs to the same organization; where when we went on strike the mine closed down. They thought that that was a very excellent system. So the strike was declared. They at once notified the engine winders, who had a separate contract with the mine owners, that they would not be allowed to work. The engine winders passed a resolution saying that they would not work. The haulers took the same position. No one was allowed to approach the mines to run the machinery.

Well, the mine manager, like mine managers everywhere, taking unto himself the idea that the mines belonged to him, said, “Certainly the men won’t interfere with us. We will go up and run the machinery.” And they took along the office force. But the miners had a different notion and they said, “You can work in the office, but you can’t run this machinery. That isn’t your work. If you run that you will be scabbing; and we don’t permit you to scab-not in this section of the country, now.” They were compelled to go back to the office. There were 325 horses underground, which the manager, Llewellyn, complained about being in a starving condition. The officials of the union said, “We will hoist the horses out of the mine.” “Oh, no, we don’t want to bring them up. We will all be friends in a few days.”

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