Hellraisers Journal – Friday November 21, 1919
Mother Jones News for October 1919, Part II
Found in Indiana Encouraging Wives of Steel Strikers to Raise Hell
From The Muncie Morning Star of October 29, 1919:
Elwood District Quiet
Mother Jones with William Z. Foster
Harry B. Dynes, who is the state representative at Elwood, reported to the governor today that everything is going along nicely at Elwood. He said that there are many rumors, but little trouble. Mother Jones spoke there last night, but according to Mr. Dynes, “even the strikers were disgusted with her line of talk.”
Mr. Dynes sent the Governor quotations from her speech. The report said that she declared “this industrial war must be fought to a finish” and that she advised the women “to raise hell.”
[In fact Mother was loudly applauded by her audience, see below.]
[Photograph added.]
MOTHER JONES NEWS FOR OCTOBER 1919
From the Mount Carmel Item of October 16, 1919:
“MOTHER” JONES WILL BE 90 YEARS OLD NEXT MAY
“Mother” Jones, who took a leading part in the anthracite coal strikes here in 1900 and 1902 and is now assisting in the steel strike, will be ninety years old next May.
She made this statement to an audience of Bethlehem steel strikers in the Lyric Theatre at Allentown, where she spoke in support of the tieup.
Introduced as being a “better fighter at 83 than when she was 23,” Mrs. Jones corrected the Chairman and said that she was on the eve of four score and ten.
Approaching 90, she retains her mental and physical faculties to a remarkable degree and is as active as she was during the coal suspension before the Strike Commission put an end to labor troubles in that industry through northeastern Pennsylvania.
She has been in strikes all over the country and has been an organizer of the American Federation of Labor for nearly fifty years.
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday October 25, 1919
Gary, Indiana – Mother Jones: “Fight for Righteousness and Justice on Earth”
Mother Jones at Gary, Indiana, October 23, 1919:
Christ himself would agitate against [the Steel Barons]. He would agitate against the plutocrats and hypocrites who tell the workers to go down on their knees and get right with God. Christ, the carpenter’s son, would tell them to stand up on their feet and fight for righteousness and justice on the earth.
[Emphasis added.]
From The New York Times of October 24, 1919:
-The kept press is suddenly concerning itself with strike violence. Not a word, have they, of course, for the strikers and organizers (including Mrs. Fannie Sellins) slaughtered thus far, before and during the strike. But should the strikers decide to get off their knees and stand up and fight for their lives, well, that’s another matter altogether.
MOTHER JONES URGES STRIKERS TO VIOLENCE
—–
Col. Mapes Says Situation in Gary Is Serious
and Orders Troops to Shoot Rioters.
—–
Special to The New York Times.
CHICAGO, Oct. 23.-Making the first public appeal for violence since the steal strike started in the Calumet region and declaring herself a Bolshevik, Mother Jones stirred to enthusiasm some twelve hundred strikers and their wives in Turner Hall, Gary, Ind., today following the refusal of the authorities to permit her to speak in East Side Park.
Mother Jones with William Z. Foster -from New York Daily News of October 1, 1919
[Said Mother Jones, who was cheered for five minutes:]
So this is Gary. Well, we’re going to change the name and we’re going to take over the steal works and were going to run them for Uncle Sam. It’s the damned gang of robbers and their political thieves that will start the American revolution and it won’t stop until every last one of them is gone.
———-
———-