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Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday April 16, 1912
Mother Jones News Round-Up for March 1912, Part II
Found in Spokane, Washington and in Missoula and Butte, Montana
From The Daily Missoulian of March 28, 1912:
From the Spokane Daily Chronicle of March 28, 1912:
WOMAN SUFFRAGE, BAH! SAYS MOTHER
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“Mother Jones” Has No Use
for Equal Rights Issue.
———-“Woman suffrage-bah! The mere thought of the movement makes me tired.”-“Mother” Jones.
“Mother” Jones, who has championed the interests of working men, women and children for over a quarter century and who has promoted strikes in various sections of the nations is a socialist but by no means a suffragist.
[She asserted at Machinists’ union headquarters this afternoon:]
The woman’s place is in the home, molding the character of her children, if she has any, and preparing them to meet the issues that will confront them later in life-educating them to the economic problems that affect them,” she asserted at Machinists’ union headquarters this afternoon.
Why, the men haven’t learned yet to vote intelligently and just the same as men are now selling out their votes for a schooner of beer to cunning politicians, the woman’s vote will be influenced with a bouquet or a box of candy.
Calls It Worthless Cause.
Women are simply wasting their time upon a worthless cause in their struggle for the ballot, for as soon as the economic system has become straightened out the way it ought to be, woman will be the equal of man anyway.
That time will come when the great army of working people have become awakened to their power and have taken possession of the machinery of production and the greedy capitalistic class that is now grinding out the lives of the little children of the poor for profit have been made to step down and out.
The employing class is scared almost to death of the working men and women of the nation right now, and if the workers only knew it, they would not be in want over night.
While the working people of the world are no more than a day or two from the poorhouse the year round, as a rule, the poodle doge of the rich are having banquets given in their honor and are treated better than children of the poor.
Prohibitionists say that the prevalence of the drinking habit among the working people is the cause of so much poverty, yet government statistics show that the average workingman has but $12 a year to spend for such luxuries as an occasional drink of liquor.
She 80 Years Old.
All over the nation the working people are gradually waking up and though I will be 80 years old on the first of May, I hope to see the time that the economic system has changed completely and that the working class is in power.
“Mother” Jones spoke in behalf of the striking shopmen on the Harriman railway system Wednesday night at the armory building and will leave tonight over the Great Northern for the east, expecting to be in Minneapolis in a short time.
Despite her advanced age, “Mother Jones is a splendid specimen of vigor and health and her voice is still steady and strong.
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