Tag: Illinois Central and Harriman Lines Shopmens System Federation

Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Ends Western Tour on Behalf of Shopmen’s Strike, Plans to Leave for West Virginia

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, Better to Die Fighting, Sac Str p1, June 3, 1912—————

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday June 5, 1912
Mother Jones Preparing to Leave Montana, Heading for West Virginia

From The Sacramento Star of June 3, 1912:

Mother Jones on Train, Sac Str p1, June 3, 1912

Mother Jones has forwarded $800 from Montana to the Harriman shop strikers. Seven hundred of this was donated, in response to her earnest appeal, by unions of coal miners, and the remainder came from mill and smeltermen, machinists and other crafts. How persistent has been her work tor the System Federation is seen in her statement that she refused to accept less than $250 from the union of miners at Roundup, and their $100 donation was sent through their international office. Butte metal miners gave $300 some time ago.

[She writes in a characteristic letter to President E. L. Reguin and Secretary John Scott of the System Federation:]

If the men had been working regularly in the coal mines, I could have gathered up very much more. However, the whole thing shows the disposition of the men to aid each other in the struggle, which counts to me very much more than the finances,

I shall leave in a few days for West Virginia, to take up the battle there. It is a dangerous field, and many of us who go in there are more than likely never to come out, but what difference does that make so long as we are carrying on the industrial battle, and flaunting in the face of the foe the red flag of industrial freedom? There must be sacrifices made, and there must be martyrs. That state and Alabama must be organized within the next few years.

Tell my boys of the Federation it matters not where I go, I shall keep up the fight against oppression and wrong. Men, women and children must be free, and sentiment will never free them. Those who are grounded in the philosophy of the class struggle must go forth and give battle to the well-entrenched foe.

Tell the boys to keep up the fight. It is far better to die fighting and suffering than to remain slaves.

—————

[Emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for April 1912, Part III: Speaks in Minnesota, North Dakota and Montana on Behalf of Harriman Strikers

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote re Mother Jones, LW p3, Apr 20, 1912—————

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday May 21, 1912
Mother Jones News Round-Up for April 1912, Part III
Found Traveling  and Speaking in Minnesota, North Dakota and Montana

From The Labor World of April 20, 1912:

HdLn Mother Jones at Head of Lakes, LW p1, Apr20, 1912

Mary Jones, the little mother of the miners, and familiarly known throughout the country as Mother Jones, was a visitor in Duluth Monday and Tuesday. She delivered an address Monday evening at the Lincoln Park Auditorium in the interest of the shop employes of the Harriman lines who are on strike.

Mother Jones has been sent out by the United Mine Workers’ Union to help the striking railroad men. She is meeting with much success in soliciting funds. A fairly good collection was taken up at the Lincoln Park meeting.

During her visit to Duluth, Mother Jones spent much of her time in the office of the Labor World. We have’ known her for almost twenty years, and blamed if she does not look younger today than she did two decades ago. She attributes her youthful appearance to the fact that she has not been in jail lately nor has she been quarantined for smallpox.

Is Eighty Years of Age.

Mother Jones will be eighty years of age on May first. She is as active and as sprightly as a woman of thirty. She never looked better in her life. Her complexion is as clear as that of a baby and there is not the sign of a furrow on her kind old face.

Fight? When she is asked a question about labor conditions in the mining regions of America, her eyes flash, her mouth is set firm, her fist is clenched and she stretches out her arm with the vigor and force of an athlete. She tells a story of social injustice that reaches the heart of the most hardened.

In her speech at Lincoln Park the daily newspapers dwelled only upon the shafts she hurled at men and women of the toady type who “bend the cringing hinges of the knee that thrift may follow fawning.”

Knows the Labor Movement.

Mother Jones understands the philosophy of the labor movement. She has a peculiar way, which is distinctly her own, of driving her points right to the hearts of her listeners. For a moment she will philosophically discuss the growth and development of production; then like a flash she will clinch her argument with a militant attack upon both men and women who are responsible for injustices that have been permitted to creep into the industrial system.

Mother Jones is said to be without fear. During her strenuous life she has been cast into prison, confined in bull pens, driven at the points of bayonets, and once or twice has had a pistol aimed close to her face by willing servants of the capitalistic class…..

From The Butte Miner of April 25, 1912:

Mother Jones Ad for Lecture, Btt Mnr p10, Apr 25, 1912

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Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for April 1912, Part II: Speaks in Montana, North Dakota and Minnesota on Behalf of Harriman Strikers

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote re Mother Jones, LW p3, Apr 20, 1912—————

Hellraisers Journal – Monday May 20, 1912
Mother Jones News Round-Up for April 1912, Part II
Found Traveling Through Montana, North Dakota and Minnesota

From The Butte Miner of April 1, 1912:

HdLn Mother Jones Spks, Btt Mnr p5, Apr 1, 1912

 “Mother” Jones, a national figure in labor circles, a woman who has done a life’s work in the furtherment of the cause of humanity, regardless of position or circumstance, last night, with a vigor at her 89 years that would put to shame the lassitude of her sisters with less milestones to account for, made a stirring address before the Silver Bow Trades and Labor council that, in lasting an hour or more, was considered too short.

She spoke first as an accredited representative of the federated employes of the Harriman system of railroads, now on strike. But she went further and covered details of the labor situation generally that appealed with telling force to her audience. Her talk was frequently interrupted by applause and was given with a spirit of conviction that carried weight…..

—————

From The Fargo Forum of April 9, 1912:

MOTHER JONES SCORED TEDDY
———-

NOTED INDUSTRIAL WORKER’S LECTURER WHO APPEARED AT ASSEMBLY
HALL LAST NIGHT, SCORED ROOSEVELT AND J. P. MORGAN.
———-

“Mother” Jones, 80 years of age and well known the country over as the industrial worker’s lecturer, appeared at the Assembly hall last night in a lecture on Social Conditions, which was heard by a large number of laboring men and others. “Mother” Jones is the official organizer of the United Mine Workers of America, and has traveled the world over in her efforts in this movement. Last night she was introduced “from God Knows where.”

“Mother” Jones took a fling at Col. Theodore Roosevelt in her address last night. She accused him of selling out the coal miners in the strike of 1912 [1902] soon after he came into the White House.

Then she also rapped the Men and Religion Forward movement, which she said was but another scheme of J. Pierpont Morgan to get money from the laboring men and classes he could not otherwise reach. Her speech was a firey one and she electrified her audience with her denunciations of different nation-wide movements.

She was accompanied here to Fargo by Rev. C. H. Doolittle of Chicago, called the workingman’s friend, who opened the meeting last night with prayer which he followed with a short address on the present situation of the strike on the Harriman lines.

Another speaker at the meeting was C. M. Fielder, organizer of the journeymen barbers, who has been here for several weeks, who also talked about the Harriman strikers.

—————

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Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for April 1912, Part I: Found as Author of Series Telling of Her Experience Among the Coal Miners

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, Army Strong Mining Women, Ab 1925—————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday May 19, 1912
Mother Jones News Round-Up for April 1912, Part I
Found as Author of Series on Her Work Among Nation’s Coal Miners

From The Kentucky Post of April 1, 1912:

MOTHER JONES, 8O, SENDS WORD TO MINERS
THAT SHE WILL HELP THEM TO WIN STRIKE

Mother Jones on Train, KY Pst p1, Apr 1, 1912

Staff Special.

DENVER. COLO., April 1-Great heavy blankets of snow stretched from Rocky Mountain top to valley below as the Transcontinental Limited plowed on to Denver on its own made-to-fit-the-tracks schedule, going forward when the “beautiful” was’t hugging the streaks of steel too thickly, and standing still, when the snowplows whirled and plastered the landscape with frozen moisture vainly.

In the tourist car a little, old, motherly woman was the only person who didn’t seem to mind this helter-skelter method of running trains from snow pile to snow pile. She was sewing-mending, maybe. The silver-crowned bead bent down over the needle and thread and cloth. Presently she raised her head to thread a needle and I caught the kindly, motherly twinkle of eyes I had seen before. Where? On fields of great industrial battles.

“How are you Mother Jones?” I asked, grasping the worn, wrinkled hand. “What are you doing away up here in this snow-buried country?”

“I am well” she replied, carefully removing her “sewing” from the other half of the seat. “I am traveling along this road preaching ‘in union there is strength’ to the shopmen. You see, they have ‘borrowed’ me from the miners for a short time”

“Mother, I am going East to the coal fields, shall I carry them a message from you?”

“Tell my boys that when they strike to get justice,” replied the woman who is known as “the mother of every mother’s son” in the ‘coal mines of America, “tell them that Mother Jones will come and help them if it takes the last hour of her life!”

On May-day Mother Jones will celebrate her eightieth birthday. In the last 35 years of her life she has led the advance guard in so many strikes that the number has long since crept from her memory. Judges have sent her to jail for defying anti-labor injunctions. She has faced the Cossacks of Pennsylvania, the ‘’commercialized bloodhounds” of West Virginia, sheriffs and private detectives the country over.

Born in Ireland in 1832 she was brought to America when six years old. Before she married she taught school. At 35 she was left a childless widow. Then she became a “mother” to the wives and babies of the railway strikers at Pittsburg in the conflict of 1877. Soon the woes of the coal miners drew her to them and to them and their families she has been steadfast ever since.

“I will go to where their ranks are thinnest,” the little old woman said, as she read the strike news in the newspaper I had handed her.

“Will you tell the readers of The Post some of your experience among the coal miners?” I asked.

“Oh, I couldn’t now, it would take too long, but I’ll tell you I what I’ll do. When I get to Denver I will write down some incidents I have seen myself.”

———-

And thus was concluded an arrangement whereby The Post is able to announce a series of articles from the pen of Mother Jones, the best known person, man or woman, in American labor circles. There is hardly a workingman or woman who does not admire her, and many of them love her as a second mother. The first of her articles will appear soon in The Post.

—————

[Emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for March 1912, Part II: Found Speaking in Spokane, Washington and in Missoula and Butte, Montana

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Quote Mother Jones, Awaken to Power, Spk Chc p6, Mar 28, 1912—————

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:

Mother Jones Ad, Dly Missoulian p2, Mar 28, 1912

From the Spokane Daily Chronicle of March 28, 1912:

WOMAN SUFFRAGE, BAH! SAYS MOTHER
———-
“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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Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for February 1912, Part I: Found in Colorado, Wyoming, Illinois, Ohio and Indianapolis, Indiana

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Quote Mother Jones Master Class Creates Violence, LA Rec p4, Dec 21, 1911—————

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday March 27, 1912
Mother Jones News Round-Up for February 1912, Part I
Found in Colorado, Wyoming, Illinois, Ohio and Indiana

From the Appeal to Reason of February 3, 1912:

Mother Jones, Tacoma Tx p3, Feb 14, 1912The California Building Trades convention [of late January] unanimously adopted a resolution calling for a conference between the Socialist Party, the state A. F. of L. and the State Building Trades, with a view to united political action for the working class. Job Harriman, Mother Jones and Alexander Irvine were among the speakers at the convention.

—————

[Photograph added.]

From the Denver Rocky Mountain News of February 7, 1912:

 

ROOSEVELT ‘MONKEY CHASER,’
DECLARES ‘MOTHER’ JONES
———-

“WALL STREET WILL ELECT HIM NEXT PRESIDENT,”
SAYS WOMAN LABOR LEADER.
———-

That Theodore Roosevelt is a “monkey chaser,” but will be elected the next president of the United States despite the fact, is the opinion of “Mother” Jones, who arrived in Denver yesterday to investigate labor conditions.

“I have no doubt that Roosevelt will be the next president,” she says. “Of course, I have no use for him, but he plays to the galleries, and a Wall street will elect him.

“He is the fellow who sent guns to murder the working men in the strike of 1904 [Telluride, November 1903].

“Taft is right in with him, but I think that Taft is more of a gentleman than Roosevelt is.”

“Mother” Jones will make an address at Eagle hall tomorrow night, under the auspices of the Western Federation of Miners.

———-

From Denver’s United Labor Bulletin of February 8, 1912:

 

“MOTHER” JONES SPEAKS TO
FEDERATED SHOPMEN

Strike Is Already Won, Says “Mother”
Many Entertainments for Benefit of Strikers

“Mother” Jones spoke to a large crowd at Eagles’ hall Wednesday night, and during her address but one man left the hall. She spoke to the striking Federated Shopmen, and her discourse covered a period of two and one-half hours. “Mother” Jones has passed through the entire life of the labor movement in the United States. The daughter of a miner and later a miner’s wife, she was reared and spent her life in the labor movement. She has a wonderful memory, and in her address she followed the evolution of the labor movement in the United States, and told of how labor has been exploited by capital to the detriment of the human race.

“Mother” Jones has been traveling over the Harriman system, and said that the strike of the shopmen was won now, and it was only a matter of time until the roads will sign up. She said that on one occasion where a train on which she was riding had a nine-hour schedule it took the train thirty-six hours to make the trip.

From Rawlins Republican (Wyoming) of February 8, 1912:

 

MOTHER JONES HERE

Last Thursday evening in the Danish hall Mother Jones spoke to the striking shopmen and several of their friends. The crowd was very enthusiastic and frequently applauded the speaker.

Mother Jones is a strong and vigorous speaker and does not hesitate to call a spade a spade. She assured the strikers that she was confident that a settlement of their troubles would be made in the near future, advised them to remain firm in their demands and not desert the cause for which they had been fighting for so long. She urged the men strongly to remain away from the saloons and gambling houses and prophesied that if this was not done much discredit would be thrown upon the cause they represent.

As is usual in labor leaders, she strongly denounced the capitalist class and even took a shot at several of she religious organizations.

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Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for January 1912, Part II: Found in Fresno at California State Convention of Building Trades Council

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Quote Mother Jones, Revolutionary Class Conscious Vote, Fno Tb p1, Jan 18, 1912—————

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday February 22, 1912
Mother Jones News Round-Up for January 1912, Part II
Found in Fresno at State Convention of Building Trades Council

From The Fresno Morning Republican of January 17, 1912:

CA Building Trades Council Convention Delegates, Fresno Mrn Rpb p3, Jan 17, 1912

[Delegates to the California State Convention of the Building Trades Council.]

The picture contains most of the prominent labor leaders attending the sessions of the B. T. C. Olaf A Tveitmoe, seated in front can be picked out by his cane. On his right is President McCarthy, ex-mayor of San Francisco, and on McCarthy’s right, J. B. Bowen, first vice president and acting president during McCarthy’s mayoralty. Anton Johannsen, state organizer, and under indictment with Tveitmoe, is seated on the extreme right of the picture. The picture was taken yesterday noon by a representative of the Western  Panoramic company of San Jose.

—————

UNION MEN URGED TO VOTE AS CLASS
———-
Resolutions Propose Minimum Wage Scale
of $2 and 8-Hour Day
———-

According to the official report given out yesterday from the session of the California Sate Building Trades Council, the reports from the different local councils give promises of support, both financial and moral, for the fight growing out of the recent indictments returned by the federal grand jury of Los Angeles against Olaf A. Tveitmoe and Anton Johannsen. This information was given out by Tveitmoe, who as secretary is the press bureau of the convention…

The second day of the eleventh annual convention of the California State Building Trades Council which is being held at the Union hall, was marked by speeches by Job Harriman, defeated candidate for mayor of Los Angeles, and Alexander Irvine his campaign manager, urging the banding together of all union men for political purposes. These two speakers are themselves socialists, and would probably prefer to have organized labor fall into the ranks of the Socialist party, but nothing definitely suggesting this was made in their speeches. They urged co-operation between unions and Socialists, probably leading to a Labor-Socialist party.

[…..]

PUBLIC MEETING TONIGHT

In order to allow the general public an opportunity to hear the prominent labor leaders who are now here, a mass meeting of all delegates and visitors will be held at the Barton opera house tonight at 8 o’clock, to which the general public is invited and urged to be present. Olaf A. Tveitmoe, the indicted secretary-treasurer; P. H. McCarthy, ex-mayor of San Francisco; Job Harriman, candidate for mayor of Los Angeles and Alexander Irvine, one of the henchmen of Harriman in his fight for the mayoralty, will all speak…

“Mother” Jones eighty years old and for many years connected with the labor movement of all branches, arrived in Fresno last evening and will probably be one of the speakers of the public mass meeting…..

—————

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Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for January 1912, Part I: Found in California Speaking on Behalf of Striking Railroad Shopmen

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—————

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday February 21, 1912
Mother Jones News Round-Up for January 1912, Part I
Found in California Speaking on Behalf of Striking Shopmen

From The Sacramento Bee of January 8, 1912:

SHOPMEN HEAR “MOTHER” JONES

Mother” Jones, the famous labor leaderMother Jones crpd ed, WDC Tx p5, June 18, 1910, spoke in this city for the second time Saturday night, when she addressed meeting in Socialist Hall at 1024½ J Street. Her theme was the principles of labor unionism, and her remarks were made principally in behalf of the striking shopmen. “Mother” Jones declared the strikers were right, and urged them to hold out firm against the efforts of the Harriman lines to prevent them from establishing a shop federation.

—————

[Photograph added.]

From the Ogden Evening Standard of January 9, 1912:

MOTHER JONES AT M. E. CHURCH
———-

Evidently holding with Kipling that “the female of the species is more deadly than the male,” Mother Jones, internationally known because of her fiery oratory in defense of labor, arraigned and chided the women of her audience in the Methodist church last night, claiming that women are always the dangerous element to the cause of labor during strikes. Mother Jones spoke under the auspices of the Harriman federation, although the expenses of her present tour over the Harriman railroad system are being bourne by the Western Federation of Miners.

The aged “guardian of the minors,” now nearing her eightieth birthday, did not lack in oratorical vigor and spoke with all the vehemence that has marked her forty years experience in the labor movement. While Mother Jones spoke with almost brutal force at times, there was withal a kindly thread of sentiment throughout her talk which softened the harshness with which she emphasized her contempt for “scabs,” “corporation lap dogs,” “capital’s spies and detectives,” “capital’s rats,” and kindred vindictive frequently used.

Mother Jones turned many of her remarks to the women of her audience, stating that because the women in many instances do not understand the economic problems of the day they often persuade their husbands or brothers to return to work when their union is on strike. She contended that a large per cent of strike breakers became strike breakers because of the urging of women. “Women,” she asserted, “are the dangerous element in every strike, because they cannot see the need of labor’s organizations and do not know the struggle between capital and labor”

[She told the women:]

If I had a husband and he had never gone on a strike I would lick him and make him go on a strike. I would not live with such a servile slave, as the worker that never strikes. This nation was founded on a strike against George III and the bravest and best men of the nation have been striking against various forms of injustice ever since. And there have always been ‘scabs,’ men who were traitors to their fellows. There were traitors in the army of Washington and there were traitors to the Immortal Lincoln; always there have been traitors but the traitors have never in the end defeated a just cause. Labor never loses. It becomes better educated with each battle and its struggles becomes more intelligent and more heroic, and in the end it cannot lose.

The gray haired speaker recounted many of her experiences in different strikes, in which she has taking place, told of facing militia bullets in Pennsylvania during the coal strike of a year ago and during the greater strike of 1904. She said that the present strike on the Harriman lines was but a symptom of the industrial disease which infected the nation and the entire world and which would never be cured until the workers themselves owned the tools with which they worked. She ridiculed those whom she termed the timid strikers who were always asking how long the strike was going to last and told them that some strikes had been on after the workers had remained away from their jobs for five years. “This strike is going to last,” she said, “until the railroad company recognizes the federation of shop workers.”

Mother Jones will leave this city today for Salt Lake City where, she will deliver an address to the striking shopmen of that city tonight.

————–

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Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for December 1911, Part II: Found in Los Angeles, Predicting Brighter Day with End of Profit System

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Quote Mother Jones Master Class Creates Violence, LA Rec p4, Dec 21, 1911—————

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday January 16, 1912
Mother Jones News Round-Up for December 1911, Part II
Found in Los Angeles, Interviewed by Estelle Lawton Lindsey

From The Los Angeles Record of December 21, 1911:

“MOTHER JONES” PREDICTS BRIGHTER DAY;
MEN NATURALLY GOOD IS HER BELIEF

Mother Jones, Small, LA Rec p4, Dec 21, 1911

By Estelle Lawton Lindsey.

“Some day men will go into the bowels of the earth and bring out lead to be made into type to enlighten the minds of their fellows, instead of bullets to brutalize. In that day we shall be civilized.”

The speaker was Mrs. Mary Jones, known through this land as “Mother Jones,” saint or revolutionist according to your point of view, a woman loved to adoration by 400,000 organized miners of the U. S., and who has been described as “the walking wrath of God.”

In conversation this woman, who will be 80 years old the first day of next May, and looks like a well-preserved and vigorous woman of 50, speaks little of wrath and much of love, understanding and education.

WOMEN MUST UNDERSTAND

My work is to prevent violence, to settle, peaceably, differences between employer and employed. Wherever there are strikes, wherever there may be violence—which I abhor—wherever feelings of revenge are rampant, there I go. My work is to teach men the causes of their difficulties, to show them how to remedy conditions by changing the laws and the system. My field of activity is the world.

The trouble with the average woman is that she is a sentimentalist. She is ignorant of the causes of our industrial disturbance. She cannot realize that as long as we have oppression we shall have violent reaction in the minds and feelings of the oppressed; and that such feelings are the root of violence. The thinker who understands the cause knows all violence can be done away with. Soon women will understand, then they will give the world better men.

My work is to keep people from getting into conflicts to get them to think instead of fighting; and to show others how to think. I believe in education; and through education I believe we can so change our forms of government that feelings of revenge will die of inanition.

In that day we will not devote millions, wrung from those least able to pay, to chaining human beings like beasts for being what the government has made them.

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Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for December 1911, Part I: Found in Berkeley, California, Receiving News of McNamaras’ Confession

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Fresno Tb p1, Nov 22, 1911—————

Hellraisers Journal – Monday January 15, 1912
Mother Jones News Round-Up for December 1911, Part I
Found in Berkeley, California; Learns of Confession of McNamara Brothers

From the Richmond (California) Daily Independent of December 1, 1911:

MOTHER JONES TO SPEAK.
———-

Mother Jones, Small, LA Rec p4, Dec 21, 1911

Mother Jones, the mother of the working men, will speak at the Building Trades Temple on Fourth and Macdonald avenue, Friday evening at 8:15. Her subject will be “McNamara Defense.” The public is cordially invited to attend.

[Photograph added.]

—————

From the Richmond Daily Independent of December 2,1911:

MCNAMARA CONFESSION
CREATES COMMOTION
———-
At First Held Ridiculous Here. But Mother Jones
Meeting at Trades Hall Is Postponed–Many
See Political Move in Los Angeles Election.
———-

The blood-red extra of the Oakland Tribune last evening set the Richmond world ablaze. Its headlines, in letters inches long, read “J. B. McNamara Pleads Guilty,” “Admits Slaying Haggerty,” and “Brother Admit Dynamiting.” The Trib had little else save that it claimed that J. B. McNamara would be given life imprisonment and that his brother, J. J. McNamara under agreement with state, would receive fifteen years.

[…..]

The union labor forces of Richmond and the sympathizers with the McNamaras found themselves in queer position with the appearance of the evening papers. Mother Jones was announced to address the Richmond people at the Building Trades Council hall on Fourth street on the matter of aiding in the defense of the accused men.

Quite a body of people assembled to listen to the famous woman, but after a short wait, it was announced by the officials of the council that Mother Jones would not be present, as she was waiting in Berkeley for later and more reliable information from the southern city. There was nothing else to be done but postpone the meeting, and it was done. At a later date, should tho conditions at Los Angeles be different than reported last night, Mother Jones may appear here…..

———-

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