Why should the workingmen fight for
the robbers of Wall street?
Let them fight their own battles.
-Mother Jones
That old blood sucker,
the kaiser, ought to
be kicked off his throne.
-Mother Jones
Hellraisers Journal, Wednesday April 4, 1917
Des Moines, Iowa – Mother Jones Speaks Out on European War
Overnight, perhaps reacting to the War Resolution now before Congress upon the request of President Wilson for same, Mother reversed her stand regarding American involvement in the terrible slaughter now taking place between the waring nations of Europe. In an interview reported by the April 2nd edition of The Des Moines Register, Mother declared:
I hate war. We must not throw our American workingmen into olive drab uniforms, stick guns in their hands, and ship them over to France to be fresh slaughter for the cannons of the devilish kings of Europe.
If John D Rockefeller, Morgan, the Guggenheims, or Wall street wants to see Germany defeated, let them go over and fight in the allies’ trenches. Why should the workingmen fight for the robbers of Wall street? Let them fight their own battles, says I!
The next day, the Register reported that Mother had “abandoned her neutrality:”
That old blood sucker, the kaiser, ought to be kicked off his throne, and if he ever starts anything with this country we will lick hell out of him if I have to raise a regiment of 10,000 women myself.
Thus “Mother” Jones, firebrand speaker, abandoned her neutrality in a speech that held spellbound the miners of the thirteenth district, U. M. W. A., who were celebrating the nineteenth anniversary of the securing of the eight-hour day for miners at the Coliseum yesterday afternoon.