Tag: Greensburg PA

Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Speaks at Convention of United Mine Workers of America, Held at Columbus, Ohio

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, Grow Big Great Mighty Show CFnI, UMWC p269 Jan 21, 1911———-

Hellraisers Journal – Monday January 23, 1911
Columbus, Ohio – Mother Jones Speaks at Miners’ Convention

From the Washington Sunday Star of January 22, 1911:

LIE IS PASSED FREELY AT MINERS’ CONVENTION
—–
“Mother Jones” Makes Address Calling
Supreme Court Judges Real Anarchists.
———

Mother Jones crpd ed, WDC Tx p5, June 18, 1910

COLUMBUS, Ohio, January 21.-Control of the United Mine Workers’ convention came to a severe test in the contest for the seating of delegates from nine locals of district No. 2 of central Pennsylvania. Charges of falsehoods were made freely by each side and the convention finally adjourned to continue the fight Monday.

Expected contests over the seating of President Francis Feehan of the Pittsburg district did not materialize and he was seated without final objection.

“Mother” Jones spoke before the convention. She classes members of the United States Supreme Court and Gov. Harmon of Ohio among “the real anarchists of the country.”

[…..]

[Photograph and emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for December 1910: Found Standing with Striking Miners and Their Families in Pennsylvania

Janet RayeEugene Victor Debs
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Quote Mother Jones, Greensburg PA Cmas 1910, Steel 2, p83———-

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday January 15, 1911
Mother Jones News Round-Up for December 1910:
–Praised by Max Hayes and Eugene Debs for Work in Pennsylvania

From the International Socialist Review of December 1910:

THE WORLD OF LABOR 

BY MAX S. HAYES.

[…..]

Mother Jones, Latest Picture, Ft Wayne Dly Ns p9, Apr 9, 1910

MOTHER JONES has been busying herself during the past few weeks in trying to bring cheer and comfort to the poor miners in the Irwin-Greensburg soft coal district of Pennsylvania [Westmoreland County], and assisting those unfortunate victims of one of the most heartless lockouts in American industrial history (as has been shown in THE REVIEW) to gain a semblance of humane working and living conditions. Mother is never so happy as when helping “the boys” in the mining fields, and, as every officer and member of the U. M. W. knows, she has gone into districts in Colorado, Alabama, West Virginia and other places where many of the bravest of men have feared to tread. She has faced injunction judges, served time in jail, lived on bread and water and has undergone a thousand hardships where others have hesitated or flunked, and never a word of complaint as to her own sufferings escape her lips. In fact she is as jolly and happy-go-lucky as a girl of sixteen and always refers to her direful experiences as humorous escapades.

Mother Jones only grows sorrowful and indignant when she discusses the fool factionalism among the miners and the sufferings endured by “the boys” and their wives and children, whom she knows and loves and for whom she has done organizing work in past campaigns. She has little patience with the penny-ante politics of this or that alleged leader who aspires for place or power, and when in a reminiscent mood she can relate some wonderful stories.

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Hellraisers Journal: From The Labor Argus: Women and Children of Irwin Coal Field Live in Tents on Frozen Ground

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, Brutal Ruling Class, Cnc Pst p7, May 31, 1910———-

Hellraisers Journal – Friday December 23, 1910
Greensburg, Pennsylvania – Strikers’ Families Face Winter in Frozen Tent Colony

From The Labor Argus of December 15, 1910:

PA Miners Strike, HdLn Horrible Conditions Tents, Labor Argus p1, Dec 15, 1910

PA Miners Strike, Small, Tent Colony Greensburg, Thanksgiving, Stt Str p1, Nov 24, 1910
Thanksgiving at Greensburg
Tent Colony

Pittsburg. Pa. Dec. 14.-Have you ever camped in a bleak and barren hillside in the frosty month of December with nothing to protect you from the biting winds but a flimsy tent, with the frozen ground for a carpet, and a hard wooden bunk for a bed? Can you imagine a more cruel punishment to inflict upon the most despised criminal upon earth? And yet this is exactly what thousands of people in the Irwin-Greensburg strike district are compelled to and they are not criminals either, but upright and honest, law-abiding people. The conditions which confront these poor mortals simply beggar description, no mind can picture nor pen accurately describe the situation.

And what have these people done to be thus punished? Is it a crime to revolt against merciless oppression, to prefer death by cold and starvation rather than a miserable existence in abject slavery. If it is then these people should be punished just like other criminals, but we know of no law they have violated, and hence society owes them some little consideration, at least an opportunity to live as others in this richly blessed land of ours live.

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Hellraisers Journal: Correspondent for Duluth Labor World Describes “Starvation Camp” of Irwin Field Miners’ Strike

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, Brutal Ruling Class, Cnc Pst p7, May 31, 1910———-

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday October 4, 1910
Irwin Coal Field, Pennsylvania – Report from Strikers’ “Starvation Camp”

From the Duluth Labor World of October 1, 1910:

Keystone State Awakens to Hunger-Driven Peonage
Practiced Within Its Confines

PA Miners Strike, Woman n Children Starving, LW p1, Oct 1, 1910

PITTSBURG, Pa., Sept. 30—Thousands of Pittsburg women, influential club women as well as the wives of storekeepers and mechanics, are signing a petition to Governor Edwin S. Steuart asking that he intervene and compel the coal companies to arbitrate the strike in the Erwin [Irwin] and Greensburg coal fields.

Piloted by the “Angel of the Camp,” Miss Emmeline Pitt, committees from various women’s clubs have visited the frail tents in which are huddled the thousands of miners’ wives and children, and, after hearing the stories of eviction and brutality committed by the deputies, have gone back to their organizations burning with indignation against the coal barons and determined to force action from the state authorities.

[Asserts Francis Feehan, president of district No. 5:]

The operators could settle this strike, settle it and give the miners all that they demand and then operate their mines at 20 per cent less than it is costing them now. It’s the strike-breakers that cost. They’re paying them $2.50 and $3 a day with rations—and that’s more than the skilled union miners ask.

Experienced miners say that the United Coal company is paying at the rate of $3 a ton to have its coal mined, while the market price is just half that amount.

Three things the striking miners want:
1. Recognition of the union.
2. Check-weighmen on the tipples.
3. Payment of the Pittsburg Scale.

And these three things the miners will win, coal barons or no coal barons, for the entire power of the United Mine Workers of America is gathering behind them.

————

GAUNT MOTHERS, THEIR BABES STARVING, HERE
——-

Special Correspondence of Labor World.

NEW ALEXANDRA, Pa., Sept. 30.—Three hundred puny babies, thinly clad and underfed by half-starved mothers who have nothing to give, live beneath canvas roofs and within canvas walls these chilly days and shivery nights in the Erwin coal regions of western Pennsylvania.

A thousand other little children, barefoot and almost barebacked, “live” on bread and water in that starvation camp among the foothills of the Alleghenies.

PA Miners Strike, Starvation Camp, LW p1, Oct 1, 1910

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Hellraisers Journal: From International Socialist Review: “The Irwin Coal Strike” by Thomas F. Kennedy, Part III

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, Last Great Battle, UMWC p420, Jan 26, 1910———-

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday August 27, 1910
“The Irwin Coal Strike” by Thomas F. Kennedy, Part III

From the International Socialist Review of August 1910:

Westmoreland County Coal Strike, by TF Kennedy, ISR p99, Aug 1910

[Part III of III]

Westmoreland Coal Strike Begins Mar 10, Omaha Daily Bee p15, Mar 12, 1910

At a Socialist meeting at Jamison No. I on the evening of July 8 three well known scabs walked up and took seats on the grass in the middle of the crowd. Several armed deputies were also present, and we heard later that a large body of these cut-throats were concealed nearby. The purpose of course was to irritate the strikers so they would attack the scabs and use this as an excuse for whole sale murder. They were disappointed because the scabs were not molested, except for the scourging usually given scabs and deputies by the speakers.

* * *

Not a single beer keg, beer case, beer bottle or whiskey bottle around any camp that I have visited. Not a sign of intoxication. This is one of the gratifying features of the strike.

* * *

Numerous dynamite explosions have occurred throughout the district during the strike. No one was injured and no damage to property resulted. If experienced miners accustomed to using explosives had been guilty of such folly there would be somebody or something destroyed. I have not the slightest doubt about declaring that this is the work of the operators or their agents, or of deputies who want their $5.00 day jobs to last and who perhaps are doing it without the knowledge of the sheriff or his employers, the operators.

One of the noteworthy features of the strike is the sympathy displayed by the farmers. And it is no mere lip sympathy either, but takes the good substantial form of defying the coal corporations and permitting the strikers to erect tents on their farms right under the noses of the scabs.

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Hellraisers Journal: From International Socialist Review: “The Irwin Coal Strike” by Thomas F. Kennedy, Part I

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, Last Great Battle, UMWC p420, Jan 26, 1910———-

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday August 25, 1910
“The Irwin Coal Strike” by Thomas F. Kennedy, Part I

From the International Socialist Review of August 1910:

Westmoreland County Coal Strike, Irwin Field Camp, ISR p99, Aug 1910

[Part I of III]

THE fourth startling shock sustained by complacent, self-satisfied American Plutocracy within ten months is the strike of 20,000 or more miners in the Irwin coal fields in Westmoreland county, Pa.

It is a shock not because of its magnitude or duration, but because of the feeling of absolute security enjoyed for years by the operators. They convinced themselves that their kingdom was strike proof. They had established a perfect quarantine against labor agitators from the outside. Numerous failures of small strikes extending over a long period of years clinched their convictions that they had established ideal labor conditions. They felt as secure as the ancient slave masters, the Feudal barons or Schwab when he drank that toast to “The best, most contented and CHEAPEST labor in the world,” meaning of course the workers in his private Siberia at Bethlehem.

The first of the four tooth-loosening shocks was the unorganized, spontaneous revolt of the workers at McKees Rocks in June 1909. The second was at Bethlehem, and the third the general strike at Philadelphia.

The fourth, the strike in the Irwin field, presents some features that were absent in all of the others.

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