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Hellraisers Journal – Friday May 16, 1919
Mother Jones News for April 1919, Part I
-Found Speaking to Strikers in Rockford, Illinois
From Rockford Morning Star of April 9, 1919:
“MOTHER” JONES TELLS STRIKERS NOT TO GIVE UP
—–OVER 2,000 PERSONS CROWD ARMORY TO HEAR
WOMAN LEADER OF LABOR.
—–SAYS SHE’S BOLSHEVIK
—–
Don’t go back to work until you get an eight-hour day! Don’t go back to work until you get more pay, because the cost of living is going up! I have got to go away tonight, but I am coming back, and if you have not enough officers to continue this fight, let me know, and I will put ’em on the scrap pile.
With this declaration “Mother” Jones the eighty-nine year old woman leader of labor, closed her address before a mass meeting of Rockford’s furniture strikers at Armory hall Tuesday afternoon, which brought forth a tremendous ovation from over 2,000 persons who had crowded the hall to hear the comments of a veteran on the struggle between capital and labor.
[She said:]
The trouble with us is that we have used our brains to build up industry and have created wealth by the billions and haven’t asked where this wealth is going to. But the pendulum is now swinging in another direction. We are not pleading any longer-we are demanding! The time has come to demand. I have no use for the cringing slave. We are now facing a new regime.
