Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for March 1921: Found in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Willing to Swear If Required to Make Her Point

25th April 202125th April 2021 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote Mother Jones, Praying Swearing, UMWC, Jan 17, 1918 ———-

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday April 26, 1921
Mother Jones News Round-Up for March 1921
-Found in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Will Swear as Needed

From The Grand Rapids Press of March 15, 1921:

MOTHER JONES WILL SWEAR
IF IT IS REQUIRED
———-

“Mother” Jones, for many years a labor leader of national repute, arrived in Grand Rapids Tuesday noon for her first visit to this city in 20 years. She was a guest at the Eagle hotel and lunched at noon with a group of local labor leaders and their wives. During the afternoon she spoke at Trades and Labor council hall on general labor conditions in the United States, being introduced to the Grand Rapids audience by D. B. Hovey. Tuesday evening she will give another address at the Railway Workers’ union.

Grand Rapids labor circles greeted the venerated leader in a spirit of tribute for her many years of service in the cause of labor. She is a picturesque figure, but in spite of her flat bonnet and old-fashioned dress the impression the white haired old lady gives is not that of quaintness but of power, for the lines of her face are very strong and certainly she has a mind of her own. Though 85 years old she is more active than many persons much younger.

Mother Jones said she never knows what she is going to say to an audience until she faces it.

[She said:]

I’m not one of those orators that prepare a speech beforehand. I have to see what the folks I’m going to talk to look like first. If they’re a lot of roughnecks like us not I’ll swear at ’em.

———-

[Photograph added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for January 1918: Found in Indianapolis at Convention of United Mine Workers of America

26th February 2018 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote Mother Jones, Praying Swearing, UMWC, Jan 17, 1918

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Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday February 26, 1918
Mother Jones News for January 1918: Gives Speech at Miners’ Convention

Mother Jones Fire Eater, Lg Crpd, St L Str, Aug 23, 1917

On January 17th of this year, Mother Jones was found speaking in Indianapolis, Indiana, at the Convention of the United Mine Workers of America. She voice her support for President Wilson and for the war effort, declaring:

We must lick the Kaiser.

She also spoke regarding the ongoing attempt to organize West Virginia:

There is a system of industrial feudalism in the State of West Virginia but before another year ends the backbone of that damnable system will be broken and men will rise beneath those stars and stripes as they should rise, free, for the first time. We propose to put the infamous gunmen there out of business. We will make them find other occupations. You are robbed and plundered to pay these gunmen that are hired to keep you in industrial slavery. If it takes every man of the 500,000 miners in this country to march into West Virginia we propose to drive out that feudal system that survives there. It is an outrage and an insult to that flag. They may as well prepare for business, for we are going to do it. The president of the Winding Gulf gang said in Washington, “Don’t you know that Mother Jones swears?” I was asked, “Do you swear, Mother Jones?” I said, “You don’t think I’m hypocrite enough to pray when I’m talking to those thieves!”

[Emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for July 1917, Part II: Found in West Virginia & Washington, DC

18th August 2017 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

You ought to be out raising hell.
This is the fighting age.
Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones

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Hellraisers Journal, Saturday August 18, 1917
Mother Jones News for July, Part II: Organizing West Virginia

From the United Mine Workers Journal of July 12, 1917:

The following was published as an advertisement in the The Beckley (West Virginia) Messenger of July 10, 1917, but without the final paragraph.

“Mother” Jones’ Refreshing Experience

“Mother” Jones had a most refreshing experience at a great meeting of the miners at Quinnimont, West Virginia, on the 14th day of June. The Layland mines, where the meeting was held, is owned by the Berwin-White Coal Company, and a large number of men are employed at this place. It is in the very heart of the mountainous New River coal fields. In the years gone by this section has been a veritable Gibraltar of the foes of unionism, and armed guards have patrolled the works of the companies looking for those who were trying to carry the message of unionism to the miners of this section. Happily, this condition has passed away in many parts of this field, and the private gunman is being driven farther and farther back into the remote mountain fastnesses.

The refreshing part of the Layland meeting was the manner and spirit in which Mr. O. A. Kneer, the superintendent of the Berwin-White Coal Company received the visit of “Mother” Jones. Instead of following the tactics of some of the less enlightened companies and forbidding “Mother” holding a meeting at the mines, he told the miners to go to the meeting, and was present himself. After the meeting was over he said it was one of the best addresses he had ever heard. Having an open mind and the spirit of fair play, he was ready to meet the miners half way and deal with them as men with rights.

If all the coal companies were enlightened enough to show the same spirit, the coal fields of the country would not so often be the scene of bitter industrial struggles. Mr. O. A. Kneer, by his fairness and good will, has done much to bring peace between the miners and operators in that section. His attitude is commended to the companies who think to crush the miners by private armies of gunmen. There is nothing that appeals to the average miner so much as fair play.

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Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for November 1916: Pays Visit to President Wilson with Labor Delegation

16th December 201616th December 2016 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

I am loyally yours for a damn fine fight.
-Mother Jones

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Hellraisers Journal, Saturday December 16, 1916
Mother Jones Found in Washington D. C. During November

We pause to review the activities of Mother Jones, that fearless champion of the cause of working-class men, women and children in their struggle for industrial freedom. We first find her remembered for her work on behalf of the children of the mills when she led them on the March of the Mill Children during the summer of 1903.

From the Iowa Bayard Advocate of November 2, 1916:

TENEMENT CHILDREN WILL
VISIT WILSON
—–
Their Welcome Will Be Unlike That
Once Given at Oyster Bay.
—–

New York, Oct. 28.-Fifty mothers of New York’s east side, with their children, who have been emancipated from sweatshops by the enactment of

the child labor law, are going to Shadow Lawn, Saturday, in person to thank President Wilson.

A “kind lady,” who prefers to conceal her identity, has donated a special car to be attached to one of the trains bearing pilgrims from New York to Shadow Lawn to hear the president’s address on “Wilson day.” The children will carry armsful of artificial flowers which they used to make in the factories, before their emancipation.

No such pilgrimage of the children of the poor has been attempted since the one when Theodore Roosevelt was president of the United States and a carload of children from the Pennsylvania coal mines [textile mills] journeyed to the summer capital at Oyster Bay to petition for a national child labor law.

“Mother Jones,” who conducted that excursion, told recently in public of the refusal of the guards at Oyster Bay to allow the children to pass the outer gate, and of their return home to wait 14 years for a Woodrow Wilson to set them free.

[Photograph added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for September 1916: Stumps for Wilson & Kern in Indiana

12th October 20169th June 2018 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

The miners need no angel.
They are living in hell
and they want to raise hell.
-Mother Jones

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Hellraisers Journal, Thursday October 12, 1916
Mother Jones Found in Indiana During Month of September

Mother Mary Harris Jones, Logansport, IN, Sept 27, 1916

Mother Jones spent the much of the month of September 1916 in Indiana campaigning for the re-election of both President Wilson and Senator Kern. But before beginning our coverage of Mother’s activities in Indiana, we found an article from an Arizona newspaper which complained of her campaign on behalf of the re-election of Governor Hunt in that state.

Hellraisers Journal of September 2nd republished an article from the September 1st edition of the Graham Guardian of Safford, Arizona, which expressed much outrage over “The Stormy Petrel” and the bad language use by the supposedly foul-mouthed union agitator at a rally held in Phoenix on August 21st. The Guardian claimed that Mother campaigned as much for whiskey as she did for Governor Hunt.

Hellraisers Journal of September 5th republished two interviews with Mother Jones conducted while she was in Evansville, Indiana, to speak at the city’s Labor Day Celebration. Mother Jones declared herself in favor of the re-election of President Wilson and the Indiana Senator, John Kern. She demanded the six-hour day, and, on the subject women and the economic struggle she stated:

The problem of this age is not suffrage, not feminism, not liquor: it’s the industrial question. That’s the nation’s disease, that has bred nearly every war of mankind, for most wars are wars fought for capital.

You never can change the situation in which those who toil are illfed and ignorant, until woman is awakened to the economic situation in this country. She is by nature more human than man. When she becomes more enlightened to real labor conditions in this country, she will not rest until every child is well fed, well clothed and well educated.

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Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for June 1916: Arizona Newspaper Revives Polly Pry

6th July 201625th January 2024 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

There are no limits to which
powers of privilege will not go
to keep the workers in slavery.
-Mother Jones

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Thursday July 6, 1916
Mother Jones Defamed by Newspaper of Clifton, Arizona

Mother Jones, UMWJ, Feb 10, 1916

The Copper Era of Clifton, Arizona, took on both Mother Jones and Charles Moyer, President of the Western Federation of Miners, in a pair of articles published on June 2nd of this year. It is doubtful that the opinion of the kept press regarding Moyer’s supposed radicalism will weigh into the miners decision one way or the other when they gather at their convention later this month.

The Copper Era took note of the fact that Mother Jones came to Arizona to lend her support to Governor Hunt, friend of the copper miners, and that she is also a close associate of Charles Moyer, and has been for a very long time. In a long article, that newspaper revived the old charges made against Mother in 1904 by the scandal-sheet, Polly Pry. Those charges were then read into the Congressional Record in June of 1914 by Congressman Kindel of Colorado. The goal is to defame Mother Jones in eyes of working people-a waste of ink, as that tactic has been tried before and has never succeeded.
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