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Hellraisers Journal – Thursday September 18, 1919
Cleveland, Ohio – Mother Jones Speaks at U. M. W. A. Convention, Part II
From Stenographic Report by Mary Burke East
-September 16th speech of Mother Jones continued:
In Homestead the labor men were allowed to speak for the first time in 28 years. We were arrested the first day. When I got up to speak I was taken. Eight or ten thousand labor men followed me to the jail. They all marched there. When we went into the jail they remained outside. One fellow began to cry and said: “What for you take Mudder Jones?” and they took him by the neck and shoved him behind the bars. That is all he did or said. We put up a bond of $15 each. We were to come for trial the next day, but the burgess didn’t appear. They postponed the trial on account of the mob that appeared outside. When they got me in jail the police themselves got scared to death. One of our men said: “Mother can handle those men.” He was told, “No, nobody can handle them.” “Yes, she can; let her get out.” I went out and said: “Boys, we live in America! Let us give three cheers for Uncle Sam and go home and let the companies go to hell!” And they did. Everybody went home, but they went down the street cheering. There was no trouble, nobody was hurt-they were law-abiding. They blew off steam and went home.
In Duquesne they took forty men. One man came out of a restaurant and asked what the trouble was. They got him by the back of the neck and put him behind the iron bars. He was kept there from two o’clock Monday afternoon until ten o’clock Sunday morning without a bite to eat or even a drink of water. That was the only crime the man had committed. Is there any kaiser who is more vicious than that? Do you think it is time for us to line up, man to man, and clean out those kaisers at home?
The steel workers have taken a strike vote and decided to strike. You men must stand behind them. Never mind what anybody says, that strike will come off next Monday. The miners and all the other working men of the nation must stand with them in that strike, because it is the crucial test of the labor movement of America. You are the basic industry. They didn’t win the war with generals, and the President didn’t win the war. They could have sent all the soldiers abroad, but if you hadn’t dug the coal to furnish the materials to fight with, what could they have done? You miners at home won the war digging coal. You have been able to clean up the kaisers abroad, now join with us and clean up the kaisers at home.
