Mother Jones Under Arrest
-by L. H. Marcy
Mother Jones Arrested and Jailed in a Box Car
Last June, when “Mother Jones” traveled across the states from Butte, Mont., to aid the West Virginia miners in their fight, a reporter on the Charleston Gazette interviewed her. The following is quoted from this paper June 11th.
Mother Jones…from the stump and through the press has shown a desire only to do something for the betterment of the great American laboring class. She is 80 years old. On the day of her arrival here she addressed a miners’ mass meeting for an hour and a half-and unassisted she climbed a steep hill to the speakers’ stand and made a stronger effort and a more telling address in every way than that of any of the others whose names appeared on the list of speakers, and most of whom were only half her years.
Some people never get old, and Mother Jones is one who, no matter how long she be spared to her stormy career, will be gathered to her ancestors in the bosom of youth.
The reporter had heard a lot about the woman he was about to interview-and seen her pictured everywhere-had heard of her making fiery speeches in places where her life was in danger, and he expected to encounter a cyclone.
The reporter, however, was wrong.
What he really found was a kindly-faced woman of apparently 50 years-the only evidence of her four score years being an abundance of snow-white hair. She gave the reporter a kindly greeting-a greeting that reminded him at once of the name that had attached itself to the woman he had come to see-the name was that of “mother”-and the reporter knew whence the name had come.
“Mother” was right.
A few brief questions, and as many brief answers and the interview was over-for “Mother” Jones does not seek to be featured in the daily press.
[She said:]
I am simply a social revolutionist. I believe in collective ownership of the means of wealth. At this time the natural commodities of this country are cornered in the hands of a few. The man who owns the means of wealth gets the major profit, and the worker, who produces the wealth from the means in the hands of the capitalist, takes what he can get. Sooner or later, and perhaps sooner than we think, evolution and revolution will have accomplished the overturning of the system under which we now live, and the worker will have gained his own. This change will come as the result of education.
My life work has been to try to educate the worker to a sense of the wrongs he has had to suffer, and does suffer-and to stir up the oppressed to a point of getting off their knees and demanding that which I believe to be rightfully theirs. When force is used to hinder the worker in his efforts to obtain the things which are his, he has the right to meet force with force. He has the right to strike for what is his due, and he has no right to be satisfied with less. The people want to do right, but they have been hoodwinked for ages. They are now awakening, and the day of their enfranchisement is near at hand.
That, in substance, is what Mother Jones had to say about her mission on earth. She bowed the reporter from the room. He had seen “Mother Jones.”
For eight months “Mother Jones” has been working, speaking and fighting with the West Virginia miners. In spite of her eighty years she has suffered with the miners, their wives and children, sharing every hardship, the cold of winter in the mountains, the coarse food and the insults and brutality of the “guards” and militiamen.
Many were the speeches she made and every one a battle cry for class solidarity. The most weary and disheartened group gathered courage and inspiration when she addressed her “Boys.”
But it became evident to the mill bosses that the beautiful, white-haired woman was a militant figure that it would be well to eliminate. So, on February 13th, “Mother Jones” was arrested on a charge of murder. It is claimed that she advised the strikers to arm themselves. Many times the mine “guards” crept up upon strikers in their mountain retreat, and coldly murdered them. Several “guards” were discovered and shot by the miners in self defense. An attempt will be made to hold “Mother Jones” responsible. Evidently the true Progressive believes in murder only where the gun is in the hands of a servant of the owning class and directed against working men.
[Emphasis added.]
Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: Mother Jones Arrested in West Virginia by Leslie H. Marcy” →
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-from Solidarity of January 11, 1913
