Hellraisers Journal – Sunday June 20, 1920
-Mother Jones News for May 1920, Part II
Found Described by John D. Barry and Speaking in Streator, Illinois
From The Pacific Commercial Advertiser of May 15, 1920:
AN EVENING WITH MOTHER JONES
BY JOHN D. BARRY
The News “New York’s Picture Newspaper” May 7, 1920
A few months ago I heard someone say: “I wonder where Mother Jones is now. I suppose that, like many an other she has pulled in her horns and gone into retirement.”
I thought of those words as I listened to the old lady in Los Angeles recently, on her way to San Francisco, and heard her declare in that deep, strong voice of hers, the highly developed voice of the practiced orator, that she had passed her ninetieth milestone.
“You’ve got a lot of fight in you yet,” said a man who had himself long been a fighter for good cause.
[Mother Jones announced:]
Whenever there’s a fight for labor, I want to be there. I’m still in the ring.
I wondered if those fights hadn’t been the means of keeping her so well and young. She fulfilled the law emphasized by the psychologists, that life, to be a success, must mean persistent devotion to the ideals of the mind and the spirit. Her ideals had been high. They had exacted hard service. She had lived up to them devotedly.
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She knew that a group of us had come to hear her talk and it was characteristic of her good humor to talk freely for our entertainment and enlightenment. She was evidently a born story teller. She had a dramatic quality that, under different circumstances, might have made her a great actress or a great playwright. Her memory was like a series of brilliant slides. Now she would give us one picture, now another.
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday May 9, 1920
-Mother Jones News for March 1920, Part III
Jim Seymour Describes Labor Defense Meeting in San Francisco
From The Butte Daily Bulletin of March 29, 1920:
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Bulletin’s “Minister Without Portfolio”
Attends Interesting Gathering of
“Vicious Syndicalists.”
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BY JIM SEYMOUR.
(Special to the Bulletin.)
Frisco (known bourgeoiseally as San Francisco), March 20 (By Mail).-Last night [Friday, March 19th] California hall was filled to “S. R. O.” by specimens of the various breeds of workers and a very few others. William Cleary, attorney for a number of vicious criminal syndicalists, and some woman called “Mother Jones,” were billed to speak under the auspices of the Labor Defense league. Cleary jimmed the meeting by exercising his prerogative as a member of the bar and coming late. The trial was kept waiting for him until several of the chairs got too hot for the comfort of the sitters, whereupon Robert Whitaker, ex-sky pilot [preacher] and chairman of the meeting, who seems too good-natured to be named anything more dignified than Bob, delivered a serm-an opening address in which he mentioned the names of Anita Whitney, Kate O’Hare and one Eugene Debs. The applause percentages follow: Whitney, 96; Debs, 72; O’Hare, 49. Collection for defense of criminal syndicalists, for which the Lord be praised, $148.03.
The Rev. Bob then addressed us a few remarks that convinced us that the white-haired old woman on the stage was really Mother Jones and that nobody was trying to palm off a ringer on us. I don’t know just what it was, but Whitaker said something that Mother Jones didn’t quite agree with; and I don’t know just what Mother Jones’ reply was, but she gave him a good-natured bawling out that seemed to amuse the audience but failed to disturb the equanimity of the man who had just collected $148 for the cause. And so long as it didn’t harm him, or us, or the boys in jail, we will remark that it served him jolly well right-he should have known better than to pull that absurd burgeoise stunt of introducing a speaker that is better known than Jesus Christ. [Note: Mother Jones as a devote Catholic would certainly dispute that description of her fame.]
Hellraisers Journal – Friday May 7, 1920
-Mother Jones News for March 1920, Part I
Found Supporting Shipyard Strikers of San Francisco and Vicinity
From The Los Angeles Times of March 11, 1920:
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“Mother”‘ Jones, one of the most widely known union labor agitator in the world, who has been resting in this city for the last week, will leave today for Oakland to lend her support to the shipyard strikers in the Bay cities, according to information given out yesterday at the oil workers headquarters, room 111, Central Labor Temple.
The aged agitator last night stated that she did not know whether she was going to Oakland today or not, and intimated that it was none of the newspaper’s business what she was going to do. But at the home of Frank Flaherty, 2759 Marengo street, where “Mother” is staying, it was announced that she would leave tonight.
A telegram also was sent to V. C. Doaslaugh, secretary of the Alameda county Metals Trade Council, yesterday, in which it was stated that “Mother” Jones would arrive there Friday. The message was signed by C. B. Harvey, vice-president of the local Oil Workers’ Union.
“Mother” Jones came to Los Angeles to recuperate from a nervous breakdown, it was said at the Central Labor Temple, yesterday. The elderly woman participated in the recent fiasco of the Pennsylvania Steel workers, and report indicate that the collapse of that strike brought on an attack of “nerves” which caused her to retire to this city.
During her stay in this city, “Mother” Jones has had only one opportunity to talk. Last Sunday [March 7th] she addressed a few union laborites at the Labor Temple.
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday February 22, 1919
Mother Jones News for January 1919
-Found in Los Angeles, California
On January 14th, Mother Jones sent a message from Los Angeles to the National Labor Convention for the defense of Tom Mooney which opened in Chicago on that date.
Telegram from Mother Jones:
January 14, 1919
To Ed Knockels,
166 Washington St.,
Chicago, Illinois
To the delegates in Convention greeting. May your resolutions be tempered with reason. Courts of our country must be exonerated. Convention must demand courts be cleansed of corporation judges. Place men on bench who will consider justice before dollars. Blot must be removed from courts. If the workers lose faith in courts then where are they to turn for justice.
Mother Jones.
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[Photograph added from The Evening Review (East Liverpool, Ohio) of January 4, 1919.]
From Nebraska’s Lincoln Daily Star of January 15, 1919:
LABOR RADICALS BADLY DEFEATED IN FIRST CLASH
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CHICAGO, Jan. 15.-After a fight which occupied the entire morning session the conservatives defeated the radicals by a vote or 2 to 1 today in organizing the national labor congress, called to consider plans for obtaining a new trial for Thomas J. Mooney, serving a life term for murder growing out of the San Francisco preparedness day parade bomb out rage.
[…..]
At the opening of today’s session Chairman Nolan made a plea for harmony and urged the delegates to speedily get to the consideration of the business for which the convention was called.
A message of greeting from “Mother” Jones at Los Angeles was read, in which she expressed the opinion that a rehabilitation of the country’s judicial system was necessary. “If labor loses confidence in the courts where can we turn for justice,” the message read.
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday January 30, 1909
Indianapolis, Indiana – Mother Speaks at U. M. W. Convention, Part II
From Proceedings of United Mine Workers Convention
-Wednesday January 27, 1909
Speech of Mother Jones, Part II:
Now, I will tell you what I am here today for. I am not here to beg. I hate beggars; I don’t want any begging machines; I want to do away with every begging parasite in the world. I want to fight and take what belongs to us. What I want here today with you is this: We have got to get those boys out of jail. We have got to let them live in this land; we have got to let them fight Mexico from here. And I am with those boys because Diaz and Harriman and Rockefeller and the whole push are together down there. They were down there wining and dining, and we paid for it.
And while I am on this wining and dining subject I am going to say something about the board member from Pennsylvania, Miles Dougherty. I want to talk to you Pennsylvania fellows. You had an awful fight there. I was out West and took up a paper and read of Mr. Miles Dougherty sitting down with his feet under the table looking Mrs. Harriman square in the eye and putting a bowl of champagne inside of his stomach— “Here’s a health to you, Mr. Belmont; here’s a health to you, Miss Morgan, and here’s a health to you, Mrs. Harriman.” And then, when Mrs. Harriman and Miss Morgan walked down the street with Miles Dougherty the fellows over home in Pennsylvania said, “Don’t you see how labor is getting recognized?” How labor is getting recognized! That’s true, Mr. Lewis, as sure as you sit there, they said that about labor getting recognized! I want to tell you here the trouble with you is this: your skull hasn’t developed only to the third degree. You would consider it an honor to go down the street with Miss Morgan, who never worked a day in her life. You would consider it an honor to dine with those fellows that skinned you and your children and murdered you in the mines, and while they were filling you with champagne they murdered us poor devils with bullets.
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday January 22, 1919
Mother Jones News for December 1918, Part III
-Mother Found in Taft, California, Organizing Oil Field Workers
Following her audience with the Governor of California on behalf of Tom Mooney, Mother Jones spoke in and around the San Francisco area urging working men and woman to take action to free Mooney and all other political and class-war prisoners. Mother then traveled to Taft, near Bakersfield, at the request of the oil field workers there with the intention of organizing them into the United Mine Workers of America.
We next find her in the pages of the The Kalamazoo Gazette as the author of a “Message to Women in Industry.” Here she states that the organization of women into “men’s” unions will strengthen organized labor for both working women as well as for working men:
Women ought to join men’s unions-not organize separate unions of their own. The battle against unpatriotic greed, the struggle for a free America, is no sex matter.
An infusion of women into men’s unions works for good to both men and women. Man has studied the disease longer than woman; he has a broader vision of society’s problems. Woman is less indifferent to suffering than man. She will contribute energy and inspire to action.
A woman will not see the hair torn from the scalp of a ten-year-old girl by unprotected cog-wheels, without wanting to do something about it.
Note: the photograph above is from The Buffalo Enquirer of December 26, 1918.
Hellraisers Journal – Monday January 20, 1919
Mother Jones News for December 1918, Part I
-Mother Found Speaking before Illinois Federation of Labor Convention
On Wednesday December 4, 1918, Mother Jones was introduced at the Convention by John H. Walker, President of the Illinois State Federation of Labor. She stood before the delegates gathered together in Bloomington for the 36th Annual Convention of the Illinois F. of L. and gave a long and spirited address in which she said, in part:
Your President is not a member of the high class burglars’ association—he wouldn’t welcome me here if he was.
Mr. Chairman and Fellow Workers, we are passing through the greatest change the world’s history has ever undertaken to bring man through. The world is making over, it is making into a new world, and it is up to the workers to say how that world will be shaped for the future destiny of the race. If we are indifferent to the change that is coming the future generations will pay the penalty.
I want to make a statement to you. I don’t live in your club rooms, I don’t belong to your parasitical type of woman, I am not a Sunday School teacher, I don’t work for Jesus—He don’t need me. I want to open the eyes of the workers…..
You and your organizations are up against a stone wall, and the most insidious machine that was ever organized in the human history is organized to break you. Are you going to let them do it? Or will you rise like men and tell them you are at the threshold of a new civilization, the map of the world is changing and you are going to change, too? You went abroad and cleaned up the kaiser, now let us clean up the kaisers at home!….
You know what the women did in New York. I went there to talk to the women. The women came to hear me. The commissioner of police sent a woman there who did not belong to my class. I spotted her immediately. She was one of Mrs. Belmont’s little lapdogs and when I began to talk she said I must be careful. She said she was the president of a number of organizations. One of them was a school decorating organization. I got the women worked up anyhow and they went out and cleaned up the scabs. The cops ran and the women with babies in their arms took the clubs and beat the cops. They were not Sunday School women, they were fighters. If the men had the fight in them those women had we would have won the battle in New York…..
Tom Mooney has been sentenced by order of the capitalists, the chamber of crooks, of California, to life imprisonment. I know Mooney, I know his wife, I know his mother. He has been a good fighter. He may have made a great noise at times, just as I have, but I know he had no more hand in the crime he is charged with, nor did any other working man, than I had, and I was a thousand miles away from San Francisco at that time. I am going to tour the nation and arouse the people to the injustice of that trial…..
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday January 12, 1909
-Mother Jones News Round-Up for December 1908
Found with Locals of U. M. W. in Springfield, Illinois
During the month of December 1908, we found Mother Jones in Springfield, Illinois, where it was reported by the December 17th edition of the Illinois State Register that:
“Mother” Jones, a noted leader among the miners’ organization of the country, addressed the Springfield sub-district quarterly meeting [U. M. W.] at Arion hall yesterday afternoon [December 16th], and in consequence the meeting was very largely attended. “Mother” Jones is engaged in soliciting assistance for Mexican workingmen who are engaged in a struggle against the despotism of the Mexican government, and who, when their plans became apparent to that government escaped to the United States, their extradition now being sought. The efforts of “Mother” Jones has the endorsement of the Illinois executive board of the United Mine Workers of America [John H. Walker, President], and it is her intention to make a tour of the state visiting the miners’ locals in behalf of these men.
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday November 20, 1918
Laredo, Texas – Charles Moyer Spews Bitter Venom at Bill Haywood
With great sadness we report and correct the half-truths and untruths spewed by Charles Moyer at Big Bill Haywood during the recent Pan American Labor Conference held at Laredo, Texas. Charles Moyer knows what it is to face the persecutions of the ruling class. He nearly lost his life in the 1913 Michigan Copper Miners strike when he was kidnapped, shot, and deported from the strike zone by company gunthugs.
From the Chicago Day Book of December 29, 1913:
He nevertheless returned to the strike zone after his release from the hospital, and was greeted by thousands of cheering strikers and their families. That this hero would now turn on his fellow workers brings deep disappointment and sadness.
Hellraisers Journal, Sunday April 21, 1918
Mother Jones News for March 1918, Part II: Found in Rockford, Illinois
From the Rockford Morning Star of March 17, 1918:
From the Rockford Morning Star of March 15, 1918:
JOHN WALKER AND MOTHER JONES
TO BE HERE SUNDAY
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CENTRAL LABOR UNION SPONSOR PARADE
AND MEETING AT LYRAN HALL
Rockford Central Labor Union has arranged a big labor demonstration for next Sunday, March 17, which will include a parade, headed by a band, which will start from the court house at 1:30 o’clock in the afternoon and move to Lyran hall in Fourth avenue, where a monster meeting will be held.
Addresses will be made by John Walker, the patriotic president of the State Federation of Labor, Ed. Carbine, first vice president of the same body, Mother Jones, leading figure in many labor struggles, William B. Hannon, member of the executive board of the International Association of Machinists, and Tony Augustine, general organizer of the International Hodcarriers, Building and Common Laborers’ association. The public is invited to attend.
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