Tag: Emmeline Pitt

Hellraisers Journal: Miss Emmeline Pitt Speaks at Mine Workers’ Convention, Requests Aid for Irwin Field Strikers

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, Greensburg PA Cmas 1910, Steel 2, p83———-

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday January 24, 1911
Miss Emmeline Pitt Pleads for Aid for Strikers of Irwin Field 

Columbus, Ohio-Convention of United Mine Workers of America
 -Monday January 23, 1911, Sixth Day-Afternoon Session

Emmeline Emmilinne Pitt, Ptt Pst Gz p13, July 4, 1909

Miss [Emmeline] Pitt was escorted to the platform by Vice-President Hayes.

President Lewis–

By action of this convention last week a motion was adopted to extend an invitation to Miss Pitt to address the convention. Miss Pitt is an organizer of the American Federation of Labor and Secretary of the Labor Temple Association of Pittsburg. She has been doing a great deal of work in behalf of the miners in the Irwin Field district. I take pleasure at this time in presenting and introducing to you Miss Emmilinne Pitt.

Miss M. Emmilinne Pitt-

Mr. Chairman and Members of this Convention: It may seem strange to you that a woman would be so vitally interested in a miners’ convention. But in view of the fact that we are still in this endless struggle between capital and labor, it is little wonder that the women of the world today are becoming thoroughly aroused to the industrial situation. If I could bring before you this afternoon a vision of what I found in the Irwin Field a few days before Thanksgiving and a few days before Christmas on my visits to that region I believe your hearts would be sad today. Hundreds of helpless children and helpless women are suffering in that field. You all know of strikes, but I believe there is an exceptionally bad condition there. I want to ask you today as men of labor to extend your interests and your sympathy and your financial support to a continuation of one of the greatest battles, I believe, that was ever waged in the State of Pennsylvania.

Going over the field in the fall, amidst the countless golden harvest fields of plenty, in one of the wealthiest states of the Union, I found those women driven from their pitiful little homes into the highways and byways, and, like the lowly Nazarene, with no place to lay their heads. There have been extreme cases that occasioned many visits there. In one little cemetery on the hillside a Catholic priest has planted a cross above a lonely grave, which tells to us all that every man cannot be bought, body and soul, with a price. Out of the yoke of Egyptian bondage came the redemption of God’s people. Out from under the rod of Israel came a great power, and I believe organized labor will come out just as victorious.

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Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Speaks at Convention of United Mine Workers of America, Held at Columbus, Ohio

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, Grow Big Great Mighty Show CFnI, UMWC p269 Jan 21, 1911———-

Hellraisers Journal – Monday January 23, 1911
Columbus, Ohio – Mother Jones Speaks at Miners’ Convention

From the Washington Sunday Star of January 22, 1911:

LIE IS PASSED FREELY AT MINERS’ CONVENTION
—–
“Mother Jones” Makes Address Calling
Supreme Court Judges Real Anarchists.
———

Mother Jones crpd ed, WDC Tx p5, June 18, 1910

COLUMBUS, Ohio, January 21.-Control of the United Mine Workers’ convention came to a severe test in the contest for the seating of delegates from nine locals of district No. 2 of central Pennsylvania. Charges of falsehoods were made freely by each side and the convention finally adjourned to continue the fight Monday.

Expected contests over the seating of President Francis Feehan of the Pittsburg district did not materialize and he was seated without final objection.

“Mother” Jones spoke before the convention. She classes members of the United States Supreme Court and Gov. Harmon of Ohio among “the real anarchists of the country.”

[…..]

[Photograph and emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: Correspondent for Duluth Labor World Describes “Starvation Camp” of Irwin Field Miners’ Strike

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, Brutal Ruling Class, Cnc Pst p7, May 31, 1910———-

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday October 4, 1910
Irwin Coal Field, Pennsylvania – Report from Strikers’ “Starvation Camp”

From the Duluth Labor World of October 1, 1910:

Keystone State Awakens to Hunger-Driven Peonage
Practiced Within Its Confines

PA Miners Strike, Woman n Children Starving, LW p1, Oct 1, 1910

PITTSBURG, Pa., Sept. 30—Thousands of Pittsburg women, influential club women as well as the wives of storekeepers and mechanics, are signing a petition to Governor Edwin S. Steuart asking that he intervene and compel the coal companies to arbitrate the strike in the Erwin [Irwin] and Greensburg coal fields.

Piloted by the “Angel of the Camp,” Miss Emmeline Pitt, committees from various women’s clubs have visited the frail tents in which are huddled the thousands of miners’ wives and children, and, after hearing the stories of eviction and brutality committed by the deputies, have gone back to their organizations burning with indignation against the coal barons and determined to force action from the state authorities.

[Asserts Francis Feehan, president of district No. 5:]

The operators could settle this strike, settle it and give the miners all that they demand and then operate their mines at 20 per cent less than it is costing them now. It’s the strike-breakers that cost. They’re paying them $2.50 and $3 a day with rations—and that’s more than the skilled union miners ask.

Experienced miners say that the United Coal company is paying at the rate of $3 a ton to have its coal mined, while the market price is just half that amount.

Three things the striking miners want:
1. Recognition of the union.
2. Check-weighmen on the tipples.
3. Payment of the Pittsburg Scale.

And these three things the miners will win, coal barons or no coal barons, for the entire power of the United Mine Workers of America is gathering behind them.

————

GAUNT MOTHERS, THEIR BABES STARVING, HERE
——-

Special Correspondence of Labor World.

NEW ALEXANDRA, Pa., Sept. 30.—Three hundred puny babies, thinly clad and underfed by half-starved mothers who have nothing to give, live beneath canvas roofs and within canvas walls these chilly days and shivery nights in the Erwin coal regions of western Pennsylvania.

A thousand other little children, barefoot and almost barebacked, “live” on bread and water in that starvation camp among the foothills of the Alleghenies.

PA Miners Strike, Starvation Camp, LW p1, Oct 1, 1910

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