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Hellraisers Journal – Monday October 8, 1900
Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania – “There Is Only One Mother Jones”
From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch of September 23, 1900:
WILKESBARRE, Pa., Sept. 20.
Special Correspondence of the Sunday Post-Dispatch.
THERE is only one Mother Jones. Her field is all her own.
Clara Barton has her work of mercy, Susan B. Anthony has her equal suffrage. Mother Jones has her “boys”-the great, patient army that sweats and strives and suffers wherever there is labor to be done.
It is a big brood she mothers-a big, toilsome, troublesome brood, scattered all over the face of the land, delving in the earth and under the earth, swarming in mills and factories and sweatshops. There is seldom a time when some part of it is not on the ragged edge of hunger and in need of a mother’s help.
That is the time for Mother Jones. She has been called the stormy petrel of industry. Her appearance is a signal for those who grow rich by grinding the faces of the poor to “go slow,” and if they disregard the warning so much the worse for them and the better for organized labor.
For Mother Jones is the most successful organizer and sustainer of strikes in the country. That is why she is at Wilkes-barre now. That is why the miners expect to win. That is why the mine owners accompany her name with anathemas.
How does she do it? By the greatest of all powers-the power of love. She love her “boys”-be they Polish or Bohemian or Irish or American-and she teaches them to love her. The combination is irresistible. The ranks of the toilers stand firm at her bidding and the strategy dictated by her woman’s intuition does the rest.
It might be thought that she is an Amazon in physique and voice and gesture; that she sweeps her forces along with her by the sheer power of her vitality. Or else that she is endowed with the youth and beauty and mysterious spiritual influence of a Joan of Arc. Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: “There Is Only One Mother Jones” -Found at Wilkes-Barre Fighting for Striking Anthracite Miners”