Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Speaks in Cleveland to Delegates of Convention of United Mine Workers of America, Part II

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Quote Mother Jones, Judge Gary Cup of Rice, Clv UMWC p540, Sept 16, 1919———-

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:

Mother Jones Crpd Women in Industry, Eve Ns Hburg PA p2, Jan 6, 1919

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.

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WE NEVER FORGET: Fannie Sellins & Joe Starzeleski, Shot Down by Gunthugs, August 26, 1919, at West Natrona, PA

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Quote Mother Jones, Pray for dead, Ab Chp 6, 1925———-

WNF Fannie Sellins n Joe Starzeleski, West Natrona PA, August 26, 1919———-

WE NEVER FORGET
Fannie Sellins & Joe Starzeleski
Who Lost Their Lives in Freedom’s Cause
August 26, 1919 at West Natrona, Pennsylvania

From The Woman Today of September 1936:

Fannie Sellins

-by Lillian Henry

WNF Sellins Starzeleski Monument, The Woman Today p9, Sept 1936

Gold flows down the Alleghany [Allegheny] and Monongahela Rivers and up the Ohio river to coffers in tall buildings in downtown Pittsburgh. There is a steady stream from the coal mines and steel mills-from the coal mines and the steel mills-from the plants of Jones and Laughlin, Bethlehem Steel, Carnegie, U. S. Steel, Alleghany Steel, Alleghany Valley Coal. These and many other sources fill the banks and strong boxes in Pittsburgh.

Blood has flowed along these rivers-shed at the command of the owners of the strong boxes in tall buildings, and one of their victims was Fannie Sellins, mother of four children.

Fannie Sellins’ grave stands in New Kensington on the Alleghany River. The tombstone, erected by the United Mine Workers of District No. 5, stands as a monument to those “killed by the enemies of organized labor”.

We went to see Fannie Sellins’ daughter and son-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Fred Broad, to learn about the life of this heroic woman.

[Said the former
Dorothy Sellins:
]

My father died when I was two years old, and mother went to work in a garment factory in St. Louis to support her four children. We all come from the South.

Grandfather was a painter-had a regular job painting Mississippi River boats. He used to take mother and the children around to union meetings. I’ve heard union talk ever since I was a baby.

Mother worked hard to organize, not only the men, but also their women. She used to go around to the women to tell them how important it was for them to organize. She was jailed for six months in West Virginia for doing that.

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Hellraisers Journal: Union Organizer Fannie Sellins and Miner Joseph Starzeleski Murdered Near Brackenridge

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Quote Anne Feeney, Fannie Sellins Song, antiwarsongs org———-

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday August 28, 1919
West Natrona, Pennsylvania – Fannie Sellins & Joe Starzeleski Murdered

From the Pittsburgh Gazette Times of August 27, 1919:

Note: We caution our readers to remember that the enemies of organized labor, through the kept press, are often the first to tell the story of labor disturbances. Already, the day after the murders of Mrs. Sellins and Joe Starzeleski, we find the kept press charging that the two died in a “mine riot.” Other accounts, from the strikers side, indicate that there was no riot until Deputized Coal and Iron Gunthugs attacked Miner Starzeleski. When Fannie attempted to save him, she was beaten and shot. We will continue to report on this story that the truth may be told of the deaths of these two labor martyrs.

WNF Fannie Sellins, Joe Starzeleski Aug 26, Ptt Gz Tx p1, Aug 27, 1919

———-

Two persons, one of them Mrs. Fannie Sellins, organizer for the United Mine Workers of America, secretary of the Allegheny Valley Trades Council and a woman labor worker of national repute, were shot to death and five others wounded in a strike riot at the entrance of the Allegheny Coal and Coke Company near Brackenridge late yesterday.

THE DEAD

Mrs Sellins, aged 49, of New Kensington: shot in the head and instantly killed.
Joseph Strzelecki [Starzeleski], aged 58, of West Natrona, a miner: shot in the head and instantly killed.

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