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Hellraisers Journal – Sunday February 16, 1902
Mother Jones News Round-Up for January 1902, Part I
Found Describing Organizing Efforts in Old Virginia
From the New York Worker of January 5, 1902:
CAPITALIST TOOLS IN OLD VIRGINIA.
Mother Jones is at present in old Virginia, organizing for the United Mine Workers. As usual she finds labor conditions in that state as deplorable as else where, more so perhaps, because modern industrial methods are comparatively new there and the capitalist exploiter has unrestricted sway. That Mother Jones has anything but a “soft snap” is shown in a private letter, recently received. She says:
This is an American Siberia if one exists anywhere on the continent. Let me tell you what happened to me yesterday. I had a meeting scheduled several miles from here. The federal judge located here got on the train and went down ahead of me. I had the meeting billed for the colored church, but before I arrived the company served notice on the trustees that if they allowed me to speak they would annul their deed. The poor negroes got scared and begged me not to talk. When I arrived the federal judge was waiting to arrest me if I spoke.
I fooled both him and the company, however, for I called the meeting in a secret place, and had a fine crowd of the boys. The company officials are trying to find out where the meeting was held, but none of the boys will give it away, and so they cannot arrest me.
Nevertheless, they tied to bluff me and sent a company policeman up to serve notice on me not to speak or they would put me in jail. I sent back word, “Jail be hanged. I am going to hold that meeting.”
The company policemen have no bondsmen, are responsible to no one but the company, and they can put you in jail without a cause, and there is no redress. This fellow who spoke to me was a dandy.
He said the company hired him for $35 a month, twelve hours a day, and night work besides. He boasted of working seven years for one man for $3.50 a week, took care of a wife, paid house rent, bought fuel and clothes and fed themselves, and when he quit he had $37.67 saved up. He thought I should not come in there and “bother the company.” In our conversation it developed that he did not know who Thomas Jefferson was. He asked me if Jefferson was a minter. When I spoke of George Washington he asked me if I meant the company doctor. And this fellow is an officer of the law in the state of Virginia!
[Photograph added.]
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