Hellraisers Journal: Horrible Disaster at Rolling Mill Mine at Johnstown, Penn., Fatalities May Approach Two Hundred

12th July 202215th August 2022 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote Mother Jones, Pray for dead, ed, Ab Chp 6, 1925 —————

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday July 12, 1902
Johnstown, Pennsylvania – Explosion of Gas Claims Many Lives at Rolling Mill Mine

From The Indianapolis Journal of July 11, 1902:

JOHNSTOWN, Pa., July 10.-Two hundred miners entombed by an explosion in a mine whose main shaft opens within the limits of this city was news to check with terror the pedestrians on the streets here to-day.

At first the rumor said that all in the rolling mill mine of the Cambria Steel Company were dead or in danger, but later reports showed that the lower figure was correct and that 400 were safe.

The mine is one of the largest in the country and to-day 600 men were at work there. When the news of the disaster reached here it spread like wildfire and in less than a quarter of an hour the Point, an open space at the junction of Conemaugh and Stony creek, was crowded with women and children. Across from them, in the center of the green hillside, could be seen the dark opening of the mine. It looked as usual, but the women who looked across the waters saw a meaning there that they had not seen before. Some cried, some moaned and little children clasped skirts and cried in sympathy.….

———-

[Emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for January 1920: Found Speaking in Johnstown and Altoona, Pennsylvania

17th February 202018th February 2020 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote Mother Jones, Revolution in Our Veins, Altoona Tb p6, Jan 12, 1920 ———-

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday February 17, 1920
-Mother Jones News for January 1920
Found Speaking in Johnstown and Altoona, Pennsylvania

From The Pittsburg Press of January 6, 1920:

‘MOTHER’ JONES TALKS AT JOHNSTOWN TEMPLE
—–

Special to THE PRESS.

Johnstown, Pa., Jan. 6.-Under police surveillance, “Mother” Jones, aged 90, who admits she labor agitator and who often has been arrested for her utterances and her part in labor troubles, spoke to 300 men, mostly foreigners, at Labor Temple, Sunday. Her audience was largely made up of the remnants of the steel strike organization and she harangued the men as if the steel strike had never been ended. Police were present at the meeting and her statements were considered milder than when she appeared here several months ago.

[Photograph of Mother Jones with William Z. Foster added.]

Note: The Great Steel Strike was officially called off by the National Committee for Organizing Iron and Steel Workers on January 8th.

From the Altoona Times Tribune of January 7, 1920:

Mother Jones Talks To Flood City Men
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Mother Mary Jones, beloved by the miners of the country and the union workers of Colorado, comes to the Mishler theater Sunday afternoon to address the members of the craft unions of the city. She was the guest of the workers of Johnstown on Sunday afternoon and delivered an address in the Labor temple.

Mother Jones is most democratic and her aim in life is to make the workers comfortable. After being introduced to some 600 workers of the Flood City she won their hearts right off the reel by saying “If smoking gives you boys any comfort, keep right on smoking.” She then invited a squad of policemen to the stage but not one of them accepted but when she had finished several of them shook hands and congratulated her.

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Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Speaks to Workingmen and Their Women Folk in Altoona, Pennsylvania, Part II

15th January 202018th February 2020 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote Mother Jones, Make Our Neighbors Wrongs Our Own, II Altoona Tb p6, Jan 12, 1920 ———-

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday January 15, 1920
Altoona, Pennsylvania – Mother Jones Speaks at Mishler Theater, Part II

From the Altoona Times Tribune of January 12, 1920:

Mother Jones Elucidates Theories To Altoona Audience

[Part II of II.]

OVERWORK AND UNDERPAY

She scored the conditions which permit men and women to be overworked and underpaid and results in riots and strikes when women and children are shot by brutes. Under her own personal observation at a time like this in the south, she said, was a case of a woman run down by mounted police who gave birth to a child as she was being taken to the morgue.

[She passionately declared:]

You have no Christianity. If you had conditions like this would not exist.

However, the speaker gave it as her opinion that the workers are becoming educated, getting a different vision; they feel the pulse of the world beating and different days coming. In West Virginia 65,000 men are organized since the inception of the union movement in that section a short time ago. Recently 10,000 of these men marched in a parade which the mayor of the city characterized as the most orderly parade he ever saw. All of which is a good omen.

BRUTALITY COVERED UP

[She cried:]

We want to give America a well fed humanity, intellectually, morally and physically. If the ministers do not wake up they will be thrown on a scrap heap.

At this point she derided the idea of saying “Your honor” to the governor of a state, who has permitted the murder of women and children in industrial uprisings.

This is the most insidiously brutal age that ever was, but it is covered up.

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Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Speaks to Workingmen and Their Women Folk in Altoona, Pennsylvania, Part I

14th January 202018th February 2020 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote Mother Jones, Revolution in Our Veins, Altoona Tb p6, Jan 12, 1920 ———-

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday January 14, 1920
Altoona, Pennsylvania – Mother Jones Speaks at Mishler Theater, Part I

From the Altoona Times Tribune of January 12, 1920:

Mother Jones Elucidates Theories To Altoona Audience

[Part I of II.]

Yesterday afternoon shortly after 2:30 o’clock, the crowd of workingmen and their women folks who had assembled at the Mishler theatre, were given the privilege of seeing Mother Jones in the flesh and of hearing her speak. At that moment there appeared upon the platform a silver haired motherly looking woman in black, wearing a flowing white lace jabot. Looking on her self-composed, benign countenance, the wonder struck one. Is this the Mother Jones who has created a furore in the whole world, whose impassioned waging of her cause for full economical rights of the working man has caused kings of finance to tremble in fear and who by her own admission says she wants “to raise Hell”?

But a second glance at that sturdy upright figure and one recognized a presence that radiates a dynamic force and vitality which gives the impression that it could conquer all obstacles no matter how great. Her strength and power in look and speech bely that 90th mile stone, which she said would reach May 1 of 1920, by many years.

Introduced by Pres. Charles Kutz, of Machinist Union No. 1008, Mother Jones wasted no time in digression but at once launched upon her theme by saying that this is the great year in the turning tide of oppression. For centuries the greatest agitators were murdered and driven off the earth through the power of money.

CITES CARTHAGE AGITATOR

Referring, by way of illustrations, to the time in Carthage when the rulers feared annihilation at the hands of the agitators, she detailed the incident of the leading one who was brought before the rulers. Asked, “Who are you?” he replied, “I am a man, a member of the human family.” “Why do you persist in this sedition?” “I belong to a class that through the progression of time has been murdered, maligned, imprisoned, roasted and tyrannized over.”

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Speaks to Workingmen and Their Women Folk in Altoona, Pennsylvania, Part I” →