Tag: Indianapolis IN

Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for August 1911, Part II: Found Visiting Colorado Miners Jailed by Injunction Judge Whitford

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, Injunction Shroud, Bff Exp p7, Apr 24, 1909—————

Hellraisers Journal – Friday October 27, 1911
Mother Jones News Round-Up for August 1911, Part II
Mother Jones Accompanies Samuel Gompers on Visit to Jailed Miners

On Sunday, August 20th, Mother Jones accompanied Gompers on his visit to the miners jailed by Injunction Judge Whitford, which visit was described in the August 29th edition of The Joliet News (Illinois):

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

President Gompers [while in Denver] en route to the Pacific coast expressed a desire to visit the coal miners who have been made the victims of the abuse of the injunction writ in the strike in the northern coal fields of the state. The committee in charge made suitable arrangements and a trip was made to the quarters of the miners in the jail, where Mother Jones, on behalf of Mr. Gompers, presented the prisoners with a large bouquet of flowers. An informal and impromptu meeting was held and a few remarks made by Mr. Gompers. The prisoner have been accorded the privileges of the court yard and following the meeting inside the jail all retired to the court yard where, with the grated windows of county jail serving as a background, a group picture was taken, President Gompers and Mother Jones being the central figures.

[Photograph added.]

—————

From The Denver Post of August 21, 1911:

GOMPERS VISITS MINERS IN JAIL
———-

“Distortions of law” and “byplays of justice” were terms applied to the injunctions issued by District Judge Greeley W. Whitford in the miners’ trouble of northern Colorado by Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor, in a speech at Eagles’ hall in the Club building at 2 o’clock Sunday afternoon [August 20th].

Later in the day he visited the miners in jail and told them they were martyrs to labor’s cause and deserved to be ranked with Lincoln and Jefferson in their devotion to the people. He told the men thy suffered no moral stigma and the good their imprisonment is doing for labor could not be measured in words…..

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Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for September 1901, Part III: Found Writing for the International Socialist Review

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones WV Miners Conditions, ISR p179 , Sept 1901—————

Hellraisers Journal – Monday October 14, 1901
Mother Jones News Round-Up for September 1901, Part III
Found Writing on Behalf of Working Class Men, Women, and Children

From the International Socialist Review of September 1901:

A Picture of American Freedom
in West Virginia
———-

[By Mother Jones]

Mother Jones, Drawing, SDH p4, Mar 9, 1901

SOME months ago a little group of miners from the State of Illinois decided to face the storm and go to the assistance of their fellow-workmen in the old slave state of West Virginia. They hoped that they might somehow lend a hand to break at least one link in the horrible corporation chains with which the miners of that state are bound. Wherever the condition of these poor slaves of the caves is worst there is where I always seek to be, and so I accompanied the boys to West Virginia.

They billed a meeting for me at Mt. Carbon, where the Tianawha Coal and Coke Company have their works. The moment I alighted from the train the corporation dogs set up a howl. They wired for the “squire” to come at once. He soon arrived with a constable and said : “Tell that woman she cannot speak here to night; if she tries it I will jail her.” If you come from Illinois you are a foreigner in West Virginia and are entitled to no protection or rights under the law—that is if you are interested in the welfare of your oppressed fellow beings. If you come in the interest of a band of English parasites you are a genuine American citizen and the whole state is at your disposal. So the squire notified me that if I attempted to speak there would be trouble. I replied that I was not hunting for trouble, but that if it came in that way I would not run away from it. I told him that the soil of Virginia had been stained with the blood of the men who marched with Washington and Lafayette to found a government where the right of free speech should always exist.

“I am going to speak here to-night,” I continued. “When I violate the law, and not until then will you have any right to interfere.” At this point he and the constable started out for the county seat with the remark that he would find out what the law was on that point. For all I have been able to hear they are still hunting for the law, for I have never heard from them since. The company having called off their dogs of war I held my meeting to a large crowd of miners.

But after all the company came out ahead. They notified the hotel not to take any of us in or give us anything to eat. There upon a miner and his wife gave me shelter for the night. The next morning they were notified to leave their miserable little shack which belonged to the company. He was at once discharged and with his wife and babe went back to Illinois, where, as a result of a long and bitter struggle the miners have succeeded in regaining a little liberty.

———-

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Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for August 1901, Part II: Found in Indianapolis at Headquarters of United Mine Workers

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, Capitalists should surrender gracefully, AtR p2, Sept 14, 1901—————

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday October 8, 1901
Mother Jones News Round-Up for August 1901, Part II
Found at United Mine Workers’ Headquarters in Indianapolis

From The Indianapolis Journal of August 30, 1901:

Mother Jones, Drawing, SDH p4, Mar 9, 1901

“Mother” Jones Here.

“Mother” Jones, an official organizer of the United Mine Workers, is in the city for a few days, resting after a long campaign among the miners and children in the factories of the East and South. She will leave to-morrow for Cleveland, O., where she will deliver an address Labor day.

———-

[Photograph added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Speaks at Convention of United Mine Workers of America, Part IV: Rather Die Fighting

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, Rather Die Fighting, UMWC p739, Sept 26, 1921—————

Hellraisers Journal – Friday September 30, 1921
Mother Jones Speaks at United Mine Workers Convention, Part IV

Indianapolis Convention of the United Mine Workers of America
Sixth Day, September 26, 1921, Mother Jones Speaks, Part IV of IV:

Mother Jones, Lecompton KS Sun p10, Sept 8, 1921

The day is gone in American history when judges can assume the role of lords above us. The pulse of the world is beating, my friends, as it never beat in human history. Not alone in America is it throbbing but the world over. Editors don’t know. They sit in the oflice using a pencil and stabbing us in the back sometimes. Ministers don’t know; statesmen don’t know; professors in the universities don’t know what is going on; but the pulse of the world is throbbing for the civilization that was started back in Jerusalem two thousand years ago. You can not crush a man today; you may put him in jail; you may fill your jails, but the fight will go on. You are living in an electric age. The current is touching the human heart of man, and never again will the system of slavery that has prevailed in the past and that we are driving out now come into the world.

I want to warn that judge today that it is best to bring conciliation to bear than to drive us apart. America will live on, and we are going to march and we are going to bring back the old times of Patrick Henry and Jefferson and Lincoln. It is up to you to stop wasting time on technicalities and get down to business and save this money you are spending. You are going to need it. Put away your prejudice and let us fight. I spoke Labor Day in District 2. Then I went down into Mexico and New Mexico. I got a paper there in which I saw that President Brophy of District 2 was doing business. I wrote him a letter congratulating him. I am glad to know that District 2 has a good president, and, Brophy, I am with you. Whenever you want to raise hell with the other fellows, send for me!

I am going after this fellow (indicating Vice-President Murray) because he isn’t doing business in Pittsburgh as he ought to. That used to be the old fighting ground. Vice-President Murray, you do business there.

And now I am going to say something to the women. The destiny of nations depends upon the women. No nation had ever grown beyond its women. Whatever corruption, whatever brutal, ugly instincts the man has he hasn’t got from his mother. I have studied this for fifty years; I have studied every great man I have ever met and he has always had a great mother. Many times I walked fifteen miles to see a woman after I had met her son.

I want to say to John P. White before I close that I expressed appreciation of him for what he did for me when he was President. At no time did I go to him and explain to him what I wanted done but what he handed me money or endorsed what I had done, and we got results. I could have done a great deal more in West Virginia, but I think from all we can hear that we are going to go forward. Don’t blame the Governor of West Virginia. Don’t be so ready to knife him. There are things no statesman can override. This is a dangerous time. Presidents and Governors must move with care. There is no state in America that has better miners than West Virginia. Some of the noblest characters you have are there and you know it. They live up the creeks and the speakers who appear before them do not always use their language or appeal to them. You must know the life of those men. There isn’t another state in the Union like West Virginia, and the organizers that go out, Mr. Lewis, don’t understand the game. I have gone to Mr. White time and again and have told him to take them out because they didn’t fit into the situation. I don’t believe in giving the miners’ money to anyone who doesn’t bring results.

I asked Mr. Lewis to send a man into Mingo to handle the finance. He mentioned one or two and then said: “What do you think of Fowler?” “He is just the man,” I said, and he gave him to me and we got results. I am interested in the children and in those poor fellows who can’t be reached except by the capitalists’ papers that go in. That is all they know. You must educate them, and I want to say, Mr. Editor of the Journal, that you ought to cut out that picture “How to Dress.” We know how to dress when we get the money to dress with. What you want to tell us is how to pull that money out of the other fellow.

Up in Princeton the men were asking for years for organization. We sent a boy up to bill the meeting but didn’t tell them who was going to speak. The boy had to run away the minute he circulated the bills or he would be killed. I went up with Mr. Houston, the attorney for the miners. We were told the meeting would be in the park three miles and a half away. I said we wouldn’t hold it there, that we would start a riot out there, and then they would say: “Old Mother Jones went out in the park and started a riot.” I said: “See if the city authorities won’t give us a place in the town to meet.” We got it and seven thousand men came there, largely railroad men, machinists and farmers. Seven cars of Baldwin-Felts thugs came down, loaded with whiskey and guns. There was no prohibition men there that day. Houston got up to speak and I saw that something was being plotted. I got up and spoke, but I hadn’t talked more than ten minutes when they began to start the riot.

When I wound up my speech I said: “Mr. Baldwin-Felts guards, I am going to serve notice on you that I will take this thing up to Uncle Sam, explain the matter, and if Uncle Sam don’t protect the children of the nation Old Mother Jones will. They won’t be raised under the influence of murderers like you.” The railroad men were afraid I would be killed and asked policemen to take me away. I told them I was not afraid of being killed, that I would rather die fighting than die in my bed. I want to say to you mothers to quit buying pistols for your children. Train them to something better than a pistol and a gun. Almost every child today has a toy pistol. You began training them to use a pistol while they were in the cradles and the welfare workers never raise their voices about it. The legislature should pass a law that no mother should buy a pistol for a child.

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Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Speaks at Convention of United Mine Workers of America, Part III: Warning for Gunthugs

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, Fools Gunthugs re Miners in Hills w Guns, UMWC p735, Sept 26, 1921—————

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday September 29, 1921
Mother Jones Speaks at United Mine Workers Convention, Part III

Indianapolis Convention of the United Mine Workers of America
Sixth Day, September 26, 1921, Mother Jones Speaks, Part III of IV:

Mother Jones Eggs On Miners, re UMWC, Muncie IN Str, p1,9, Sept 27, 1921
Muncie Morning Star
September 27, 1921

The gunmen were driven out of there [Cabin Creek, West Virginia] and there has been peace ever since. They were driven out of Paint Creek, where they had sent a death special with thirty deputy sheriffs on board. When they wanted that special car equipped to send up the mountain the painters at Huntington said they wouldn’t paint it. The machinists said they wouldn’t equip it. Some other men were asked to do it and they said: “We will talk about it tonight and ask the Lord”—they were Holy Rollers. Well, the Lord must have told them to do it because in the morning they equipped the train and later that armored car fired into the tents of the strikers.

Here are the machine guns that were turned on us (exhibiting a picture). I went up to speak to the boys and the guns were turned on them. I didn’t see them until I got on the track. There were twenty-five of those gunmen who turned on those law-abiding citizens. I put my hands on the guns. One fellow told me to take my hands off the gun. I said: “No, sir; my class go into the bowels of the earth to get the materials to make these guns and I have a right to examine them. What do you want?” He said: “We want to clean out those fellows, every damn one of them.” I told him they were not doing anything wrong, that they were only trying to earn money for their wives and children. I told him if they shot one bullet out of that gun the creek would be red with blood and theirs would be the first to color it. They asked what I meant and I told them I had a lot of miners up above who were fully armed. There was nothing up the mountains but a few rabbits, but we scared hell out of them! We organized the men there. We have them solid to this day.

Those are the guns they sent across seven states to Colorado when the men there struck. The railroad men hauled them. Those are the guns that murdered the women and children at Ludlow, Colo. Here are the Baldwin thugs (showing several pictures). Here are some of the boys who were killed. Some young men joined the militia in Colorado, but when they found they were called out to turn their guns on the miners they went home. The mine owners said they would have to have an army. Here they are in this picture. They were not citizens of the state. The laws of Colorado said a man must be a citizen before he could put on the uniform, but these were the private armies of overlords and they kept committing crimes against the miners and their families until the horror of Ludlow shocked the country. Here is the picture of the children who were murdered. 

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Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Speaks at Convention of United Mine Workers of America, Part II: “Hang that old woman…”

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, Hang That Old Woman, UMWC p733, Sept 26, 1921—————

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday September 28, 1921
Mother Jones Speaks at United Mine Workers Convention, Part II

Indianapolis Convention of the United Mine Workers of America
Sixth Day, September 26, 1921, Mother Jones Speaks, Part II of IV:

Mother Jones Arrives, re UMWC Speech, Ipl Str p11, Sept 27, 1921
Indianapolis Star
September 27, 1921

We then went into the Fairmont Field. One night while holding a meeting in New England I paid a fellow to go and circulate bills. We held a meeting on the sand lot. The United States marshal and the deputy marshal were there. When the meeting closed I went away. A little boy told me to get into a buggy and he would drive me to the interurban. When I was going over a dark bridge there were six or eight fellows at the company’s store. One fellow asked me where I was going. I said I was going into Fairmont and asked him to take care of the slaves because if he didn’t I would have to hunt a job for him next day.

Barney Rice, Joe Poggiani and another fellow from Indiana were there. I was hoping the boys would come, because those fellows could throw me into the river and say I committed suicide. Barney Rice came out calling: “Police! Police!” I asked what was the matter and he said they were killing Joe, that he was alone in the dark bridge and he had broken no law. The interurban turned the corner and I told those fellows to hurry. I ran into the bridge and the fellows who had attacked Joe had run away. He had a deep cut in his head. I dragged Joe out and bound his head up with a piece of my underskirt. I asked the interurban men to hurry him into Fairmont and they did.

Next day the boys came down to see Joe. There wasn’t a detective or a gunman that didn’t run out of the city that night. Every one of the cowards left. I had about 150 men at the hotel, and the general manager asked: “Mother, what can I do for the boys?” I said: “Send up a couple of drinks for the boys, because they need it.” There wasn’t a gunman stayed in town that night. Even the United States marshal got scared, but no- body was hurt except Joe.

That was the start of this thing. Later on I went into Wise County. Old Dad Haddow of Iowa was with me. The colored people gave us their church for the meeting. The gunmen told us we couldn’t hold a meeting there and we went out and held it at the corner of two roads. I said: “Dad, have you a pistol?” He said he had and I told him he had better show it. I told him the law said if the pistol was exposed, even a little bit, he would be safe, but if he had it concealed he might be arrested. Those hounds got around Dad and nearly tore him to pieces. They took him to the oflice and those fellows came, the general manager with them, and said: “Mother Jones, what is the matter? I am astonished, really astonished! The idea of you going into the house of God with a pistol!” “Don’t you know,” I said, “that I know God never comes around a place like this—he stays a damned long way from a place like this.”

The gunmen were there and I was arrested. The old man was nearly scared to death. They fined him $25. He didn’t want to pay it, he wanted to appeal, but I said we would pay it. I paid the $25. That evening one of the men who had been in the crowd came to me and said: “Mother Jones, I want to pay my respects to you for paying that $25 as quick as you did. The scheme was to lock you up and burn you in the coke ovens.” And you women raised those brutes! It is horrible to think of.

We battled on and here and there we organized and got better conditions for the men. In 1902 a board member and your President, John L. Lewis, went up Kelly Creek. They chased him out. I was determined to organize that Creek. I went to the town at Eastbrook and in the morning went across by ferry, then walked six miles. The company was paying two deputies to keep me out but we got into the mining camp. I told a merchant my business and he said we could use a hall over his building. I rented that for four months. I took the men down and organized them that night. The company suspected there was something wrong and the next day discharged forty of the men. Then the drivers got restless and came out. I was determined to finish the job and on Sunday went through the camp with the boys marching. I told them to ask every fellow they saw sitting on the steps of the houses to be an American and come down. They came. 

We told Jack Roan, the manager, who had come over from Columbus that day, to come out. He didn’t come out. In front of the hotel were two fellows and one said: “I would like to have a rope and hang that old woman to a tree.” Another one said: “And I would like to pull the rope.” After the meeting the boys pointed those men out. I stood with my back to a tree and said: “You said you would like to hang the old woman. Here is the old woman and the tree, where is your rope?” They ran away because there were more than a thousand men at the place. Since that day there has been no strike and no disturbance, but there is one thing we failed to do—we did not educate them thoroughly, because bringing them into the union was only the kindergarten; we should have educated them after they came in but we failed to do that.

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Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Speaks at Convention of United Mine Workers of America, Part I: “I can fight…”

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, Fight UMWA n Company UMWC p729, Sept 26, 1921—————

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday September 27, 1921
Mother Jones Speaks at United Mine Workers Convention, Part I

Indianapolis, Convention of the United Mine Workers of America
Sixth Day, September 26, 1921, Mother Jones Speaks, Part I of IV:

Mother Jones, Still w Miners, Speaks at UMWC, IN Dly Tx p9, Sept 27, 1921
Indiana Daily Times
September 27, 1921

Vice-President Murray: I understand that Mother Jones has just arrived in the convention and I am going to request Brother David Fowler to escort her to the platform. It isn’t necessary that I should introduce Mother Jones to you at this time; it isn’t necessary that I should eulogize the work she has performed for the coal diggers of America, and I will simply present to the convention at this time our good friend, Mother Jones.

ADDRESS OF MOTHER JONES

Mr. Chairman and Delegates: I have been watching you from a distance, and you have been wasting a whole lot of time and money. I want you to stop it.

All along the ages, away back in the dusty past, the miners started their revolt. It didn’t come in this century, it came along in the cradle of the race when they were ground by superstition and wrong. Out of that they have moved onward and upward all the ages against all the courts, against all the guns, in every nation they have moved onward and upward to where they are today, and their effort has always been to get better homes for their children and for those who were to follow them.

I have just come up from West Virginia. I left Williamson last Friday and came into Charleston. I was doing a little business around there looking after things. We have never gotten down to the core of the trouble that exists there today. Newspapers have flashed it, magazines have contained articles, but they were by people who did not understand the background of the great struggle.

In 1900 I was sent into West Virginia; I went there and worked for a while, taking a survey of the situation. At that time men were working fourteen hours a day and they did not get their coal weighed. They weighed a ton of coal with an aching back, dug it, loaded it and didn’t know how much was in it. However, we have moved onward and today they get their checkweighman, they get paid in cash instead of in company money as they used to; but that wasn’t brought around in an easy manner, it wasn’t brought around arguing on the floor.

I walked nine miles one night with John H. Walker in the New River field after we had organized an army of slaves who were afraid to call their souls their own. We didn’t dare sleep in a miner’s house; if we did the family would be thrown out in the morning and would have no place to go. We walked nine miles before we got shelter. When we began to organize we had to pay the men’s dues, they had no money.

At one time some of the organizers came down from Charleston, went up to New Hope and held a meeting. They had about fourteen people at the meeting. The next morning the conductor on the train told me the organizers went up on a train to Charleston. I told Walker to bill a meeting at New Hope for the next night and I would come up myself. He said we could not bill meetings unless the national told us to. I said: “I am the national now and I tell you to bill that meeting.” He did.

When we got to the meeting there was a handful of miners there and the general manager, clerks and all the pencil pushers they could get. I don’t know but there were a few organizers for Jesus there, too. We talked but said nothing about organizing. Later that night a knock came on the door where I was staying and a bunch of the boys were outside. They asked if I would organize them. I said I would. They told me they hadn’t any money. Walker said the national was not in favor of organizing, they wanted us only to agitate. I said: “John, I am running the business here, not the national; they are up in Indianapolis and I am in New Hope. I am going to organize those fellows and if the national finds any fault with you, put it on me—I can fight the national as well as I can the company if they are not doing right.”

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Hellraisers Journal: Appeal to Reason: Mother Jones on Capitalism, Socialism, and the Keys to Nature’s Storehouse

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, Capitalists should surrender gracefully, AtR p2, Sept 14, 1901—————

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday September 18, 1901
Mother Jones,  Interviewed in Indianapolis, Advises Ruling Class

From the Appeal to Reason of September 14, 1901:

An Interview With Mother Jones.

Mother Jones, Drawing, SDH p4, Mar 9, 1901

“Mother” Jones, as she is affectionately called by her boys, for whom she labors in season and out of season, was interviewed by an Indianapolis reporter at the time of her visit to that city, in which she said:

The issues of the day are capitalism and Socialism. We have our rights and I will I fight for them until the bitter end. We are now in a great industrial battle with the two armies of labor and capital arrayed against each other. We want to bring harmony out of chaos. A great industrial war is on. There is no question about it. We will have a number of strikes and other uprisings, but the workers are educating themselves. While they are producing they are reasoning. They will resort to the ballot and not to the bullet. Out of this industrial chaos they will bring industrial harmony. They will not be begging their masters to give them a day’s work or a loaf of bread, They will simply take that which is theirs by rights. They produce it, and in producing it, they should own it. We are after the machinery of production, distribution and exchange.

The era of Socialism is dawning. From the records I find that in 1850 the wealth of the American nation was $8,000,000,000. The share of the working people was 62½%, and the people who exploit had but 37½%. In 1880 the producer’s share went down to 24%, while the wealth of the nation had increased to $48,000,000,000, and the share of the non-producers had increased to 76%. In 1901 the nation’s wealth is estimated at $100,000,000,000, and the exploiters have 90% of that amount, and the producers only 10%. After $22,000,000 were raked in on the first of July as dividends, the workers had not even 10%.

Here is the point I am getting at: The capitalist class can do but little more exploiting in America. The people are disinherited, but they do not seem to realize it.

Inside of the next ten years the capitalists will have reached into eastern nations for new fields, and the middle class capitalists will have disappeared from society. The proletariat of nations will have molded its parts together and will come on the field as the conscious revolutionary party for the first time in the history of the world and will demand the surrender of the keys of nature’s storehouse. If the ruling class takes notice of the past it will surrender gracefully.

I look for the possible solution of the industrial problem in the dawn of the era of Socialism. Then will the masses of oppressed men and women of the nations of the earth rally to its bright banner and hail the advance of the Co-operative Commonwealth when all laborers will be capitalists and every capitalist will be a laborer, and industrial harmony will at last have come to a patient, long-suffering people.

—————

[Photograph and emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for July 1901, Part III: Found with Miners of West Virginia; Sends Greetings to Socialist Convention

Janet RayeEugene Victor Debs
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Quote Mother Jones, Stormy Paths, UMWC Ipl IN, Jan 25, 1901—————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday August 11, 1901
Mother Jones News Round-Up for July 1901, Part III
Found Organizing Coal Miners in West Virginia

From the Baltimore Sun of  July 24, 1901:

APPEALING TO MINERS
———-
“Mother” Jones Arrives In The West Virginia Field.

(Special Dispatch to the Baltimore Sun.)

Mother Jones, Drawing, SDH p4, Mar 9, 1901

Morgantown, W. Va., July 23.-The organization known as the United Mine Workers of America will make a desperate effort this summer to bring all the West Virginia miners now outside of their organization into it.

Thomas Burker [Burke], Edward Cahill, John H. Walker and Mary Jones, known as “Mother” Jones, arrived from Indianapolis yesterday and will begin their work here……

—————

[Photograph added.]

From West Virginia’s Shepherdstown Register of July 25, 1901:

John Jay Jackson Jr., Injunction Judge

At Charleston Tuesday Judge Jackson made perpetual a temporary injunction that he had granted restraining the striking coal miners in the Flat Top region [Pocahontas Coalfield] from interfering with the operation of the mines, and he held for the action of the grand jury certain miners who are said to have fired on United States officers. The Judge severely denounced the miners.

The United Mine Workers will get “Mother Jones” to come to West Virginia to help the cause of the strikers.

It will soon be demonstrated, however, that Judge Jackson is a bigger man than “Mother Jones.”

From The Indianapolis Journal of July 30, 1901:

Mother Jones and Eugene Debs Send Greetings
to Socialist Unity Convention

Numerous telegrams were received from sympathizers of the party throughout the country, among them being one from Eugene V. Debs, the leader of the Socialists [those Socialists associated with the Social Democratic Party of America], and “Mother” Jones, the stanch supported of organized labor.

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Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for June 1901, Part IV: Found Speaking at Memorial Service for Martyrs of St. Louis Streetcar Strike

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote EVD, re St Louis Streetcar Strike Massacre, LW p1, June 23, 1900—————

Hellraisers Journal – Friday July 12, 1901
Mother Jones News Round-Up for June 1901, Part IV
Found Speaking at Memorial for Martyrs of St. Louis Streetcar Strike

From The Indianapolis Journal of June 14, 1901:

“Mother” Jones in the City.

Mother Jones, Drawing, SDH p4, Mar 9, 1901

“Mother” Jones, known the United States over by organised labor, and particularly by members of the United Mine Workers of America, with whom she has been personally identified in many strike, made an unexpected visit to the Mine Workers’ headquarters yesterday. She is on her way to St. Louis to deliver an address, and then will visit the Illinois miners. “Mother” Jones is a regularly employed organizer of the miners’ organization now, and is said to be one of its most successful workers, especially in time of strikes.

[Drawing of Mother Jones added.]

From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch of June 17, 1901:

MOTHER JONES SPOKE
———-

HER ADDRESS WAS FEATURE OF
LABOR MEMORIAL SERVICES.
———-
LEON GREENBAUM PRESIDED
———-
Exercises Were Held in Memory of Men
Killed in Street Car Strike Riot.

At the Odeon Sunday afternoon, services in memory of the three men killed, June 10, 1900, during the parade of former street car employes on Washington avenue, were held under the auspices of the Central Trades and Labor Union.

The hall was well filled, the widows of George Rine [Ryne] and Arthur E. Burkhart [Ed Burkhardt], two of the men killed, being among those present. Each was accompanied by two little children.

The principal address was made by “Mother” Mary Jones of Chicago. All of the speeches had special reference to the street car strike, its causes and the conditions which preceded it, with a general bearing upon the rights of organized labor.

Leon Greenbaum presided and the services were in charge of the memorial committee of the Central labor body, consisting of J. H. Rakel, chairman; David Kreyling, secretary; R. M. Parker, treasurer; A. Hamberg and Leon Greenbaum. Music was furnished by the United Singing Societies.

In opening the meeting, Mr. Greenbaum, who was the Socialist candidate for mayor last spring, reviewed the events which led up to the strike of 1900. He described the scene on Washington avenue, when Thomas Rine and Burkhart fell before the riot guns of the posse.

William M. Brandt, business agent of the Cigar Makers’ Union, who helped organize the street car men in preparation for the strike, told of the conditions as he found them at the time the work was undertaken.

“Mother” Jones, the organizer of the Mine Workers’ Union, was next introduced and made an address of two hours’ duration. She was received with cheers from the audience, which proclaimed her the “friend of the laboring man,” and was frequently interrupted by applause. Her remarks were directed chiefly against corporations and the trusts.

She said she was engaged in helping the miners of Maryland win a strike while the St. Louis trouble was in progress, and, hence, was unable to be here, but her heart went out in sympathy to those who were struggling for their rights.

She advocated a revolution, if Congress and the state legislatures did not soon “give the people their rights.”

“Mother” Jones said she had been charged with inciting trouble, and believed that, in rousing the people, lay the only safety for this country.

“The most dangerous thing on earth,” she declared, “is a contented slave.”

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for June 1901, Part IV: Found Speaking at Memorial Service for Martyrs of St. Louis Streetcar Strike” →