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Hellraisers Journal – Friday December 5, 1913
Mother Jones Opines on Churches, Labor Unions and Christianity
From the Chicago Day Book of December 1, 1913
-Mother Jones Interviewed by Jane Whitaker:
Tag: Justice
Hellraisers Journal: United States v Haggerty et al., Judge Jackson Rules Against United Mine Workers of America, Part II
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Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday July 29, 1902
Parkersburg, West Virginia – Judge Jackson re “Organizers” and “Agitators”
From The Pittsburg Press of July 24, 1902:
JUDGE WAS SEVERE ON MINERS
[…]
Parkersburg, W. Va., July 24.-There was the most intense interest in the crowded room of the United States District Court this morning when Judge Jackson began reading his lengthy decision declaring “Mother” Mary Jones, the angel of the miners, and seven other organizers of the United Mine Workers and four Hungarians to be guilty of contempt of disregarding his injunction of June 19, against holding a meeting or creating a demonstration at or near the Pinnickinnick mine of the Clarksburg Fuel Co., or near the residence of miners at work. Judge Jackson, after concluding his decision, sentenced the defendants as follows:
Thomas Haggerty, 90 days in jail; Wm. Morgan, Bernard Rice, Peter Wilson, Wm. Blakeley, George Bacon, Thomas Laskavish, 60 days each. “Mother” Jones’ sentence was passed till afternoon. It is said she will receive a stiff fine and will not be jailed. Albert Repake, Joseph and George Roeski and Steve Teonike, Hungarians, passed until the afternoon session……
[Photograph and emphasis added.]
Ruling of Judge Jackson, July 24, 1902:
UNITED STATES ex rel. GUARANTY TRUST CO. of NEW YORK
v. HAGGERTY et al.
(Circuit Court, N. D. West Virginia. July 24, 1902.)[Part II of II]
In the case we have under consideration the bill alleges that there is a combination of persons who are known as “organizers,” “agitators,” and “walking delegates,” who come from other states for the purpose of inducing a strike in the soft coal fields of the state of West Virginia; that their object and purpose is to induce persons who are not dissatisfied with the terms of their employment, and who are not asking any increase in their wages, to cease work for their employers, thereby inflicting great damage and injury upon them. It is to be observed that a very large portion of the miners in the employ of the Clarksburg Fuel Company do not want, in the language of one of the agitators who is enjoined, “to lay down their picks and shovels and quit work.” I do not question the right of the employes of this company to quit work at any time they desire to do so, unless there is a contractual relation between them and the employer which should control their right to quit. At the same time I do not recognize the right of an employer to coerce the employes to continue their work when they desire to quit. But can it be said that where a conspiracy exists to control the employes, as in this instance, either by threats, intimidation, or a resort to any other modes usually accompanying the action of strikers, that such action upon their part is not only illegal, but a malicious and illegal interference with the employer’s business? The question is its best answer.
While I recognize the right for all laborers to combine for the purpose of protecting all their lawful rights, I do not recognize the right of laborers to conspire together to compel employes who are not dissatisfied with their work in the mines to lay down their picks and shovels and to quit their work, without a just or proper reason therefor, merely to gratify a professional set of “agitators, organizers, and walking delegates,” who roam all over the country as agents for some combination, who are vampires that live and fatten on the honest labor of the coal miners of the country, and who are busybodies creating dissatisfaction amongst a class of people who are quiet, well-disposed, and who do not want to be disturbed by the unceasing agitation of this class of people.
Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Speaks to Workingmen and Their Women Folk in Altoona, Pennsylvania, Part II
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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.
Hellraisers Journal: Boardman Robinson on Justice: for Capitalists (Bisbee Gunthugs), for Working Men (Mooney)
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Hellraisers Journal – Friday January 3, 1919
Justice in America: for Capitalist, for Working Men.
From The Liberator of January 1919:
-Boardman Robinson on Justice for Capitalists
-Boardman Robinson on Justice for Working Men
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Hellraisers Journal: “I have seen the guilty prosper and the wicked win renown..But our God is marching on.”
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Hellraisers Journal, Monday July 4, 1898
Poetry by J. W. Nichol: “God Is Marching On”
From the Appeal to Reason of July 2, 1898:
Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for January 1908, Found Supporting the Unemployed in Chicago
You, you miserable policemen!
What business have you here?
Your presence is and insult to
the honest workingmen
who are attending this meeting.
-Mother Jones
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Hellraisers Journal, Saturday February 15, 1908
Mother Jones News Round-Up for January 1908:
-Found Speaking with Lucy Parsons in Chicago
On the evening of January 17th, at a meeting for the Unemployed at Brand’s Hall in Chicago, Mother Jones and Lucy Parsons were both found making passionate speeches which were most unfavorably reported by the kept press.
From Indiana’s Fort Wayne News of January 18, 1908:
THE ANARCHISTS WERE RESTRAINED
—–LUCY PARSONS THE LEADING FIGURE IN LAST
EVENING’S DEMONSTRATION IN CHICAGO.
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CHICAGO, Jan. 18.-The presence of a score of policemen and an equal number of plain clothes men prevented anarchy from ruling the meeting of the “unemployed” and others at Brand’s hall last night, but there was enough of it to make the occasion lively and cause J. H. Drake, who acted as chairman, to give up in disgust and leave the hall.
Not over 800 persons in all answered the call for the turnout, but it was decided to mass the unemployed next Thursday and march on the city hall to demand work. It was suggested, if no other means presented themselves, to tear down the city hall to furnish the desired work.
Mrs. Lucy Parsons, widow of the noted anarchist, Ben L. Reitman, who makes a comfortable living out of the Brotherhood Welfare association, and “Mother” Jones all took the opportunity to air their opinion of President Roosevelt and capitalists.
Hellraisers Journal: Appeal to Reason: “The Herding of the Workers,” Rose Hawthorne Lathrop on Slums of New York
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Hellraisers Journal, Sunday January 30, 1898
New York City Slum Life – Charity Worker Knows Not Whom to Blame
From the Appeal to Reason of January 29, 1898:
A year ago, I started out to see what the east side of New York was like, and the street which struck me as the most astonishing in its difference from the up-town streets was Goerck Street. It was a warm August afternoon, and the inhabitants of the houses along its street were sitting on the steps and standing about the side walks, to say nothing of those upon the street itself.
I looked eagerly at the faces that should suggest dangerous depravity, and I thought I saw upon almost every countenance expressions of the most satanic cruelty and selfishness. I find that the people who visit me for investigation in this quarter of the city come in the same excited state of alarm at the character of the East Side residents. But after a few month of living among them one entirely abandons any idea of their being so different from other human beings, and there scarcely remains any surprise in one’s mind concerning them, excepting this fact of their living together in crowds, which seems dangerous to moral and physical health. I have found that it is a very common thing for a family of eight to have only one bed; so that possibly an elderly woman afflicted with a disease like rheumatism or cancerous affections in obliged to sleep upon chairs or to lie upon the floor, while the younger members of the family are piled upon the bed, and the poor little children are disposed of anywhere.
Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for August 1917, Part I: Found in Illinois & Indiana
There can be no democracy in this world
so long as industrial workers have to beg to live.
-Mother Jones
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Hellraisers Journal, Thursday September 20, 1917
Mother Jones News for August, Part I: “Fire Eater” Speaks
From the The St. Louis Star of August 23, 1917:
Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Comes to Duluth to Support Striking Mesabi Iron Miners
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Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday August 27, 1907
From The Labor World: “Labor’s Little Angel” Speaks in Duluth
Mother Jones spoke at the Duluth Armory on Sunday August 18th. With her on the platform where William E. McEwen, editor and publisher of The Labor World, and C. E. Mahoney who served as acting president of the Western Federation of Miners until the recent release of Charles Moyer from jail in Boise.
The striking iron miners of the Mesabi Range were supported by the speakers, and the steel trust and their gunthugs were condemned.
During her speech Mother Jones declared:
When they bring in the guns and the military, they think they have conquered; they rejoice at the thought they have conquered labor. You can conquer the steel trust, you can conquer the paper trust—every other trust in the world, but put it down for the editor in the morning that you can’t conquer the labor trust. If you wipe out the working class, what are the rich people going to do; they can’t even cook a meal of victuals for themselves.
From The Labor World of August 24, 1907:
ARMORY MASS MEETING WAS
MOST SUCCESSFUL
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Mother Jones Tells Working People of
Duluth Something About
Labor Conditions.
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Large Crowd Turned Out in Spite
of Inclement Weather—
Interest Was Great.
—–The mass meeting at the armory last Sunday evening [August 18th] brought out 300 of the faithful. The weather was most unfavorable. The worst storm of the season was at its height, and even those on the program as speakers didn’t expect to see more than the committee on hand. However, the attendance was good, and spirit was high.
The meeting was called lo order by W. E. McEwen. On the platform with him were Alderman Jos. Shartell, Mother Jones, C. E. Mahoney, acting president of the Western Federation of Miners, and M. Kaplin. The Finnish band opened the meeting with the playing of the Marseilles.
Hellraisers Journal: John R Lawson, Hero of Ludlow, Freed from Murder Conviction by Colorado Supreme Court
Solemnly facing iron bars and prison walls,
I assert my love for justice
and my faith in its ultimate triumph.
-John R Lawson
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Hellraisers Journal, Saturday June 9, 1917
From the United Mine Workers Journal: John Lawson Is Freed!
From the Journal of June 7, 1917:
Colorado Supreme Court Reverses
Lawson Judgment
Denver, Colo., June 4.—The Colorado supreme court today handed down a unanimous decision, all seven judges present and concurring, reversing judgments against John R. Lawson, who had been convicted by picked judge and jury in the Las Animas circuit court on the charge of first degree murder of a mine guard who fell in an attack upon the Ludlow tent colony, and against Louis Zancanelli, convicted in the court presided over by the same judge, Granby J. Hilliard, ex-coal operators’ attorney, on the charge of killing George Belcher, Baldwin-Feltz mine guard, on the streets of Trinidad, Colo.
The trials accorded these two miners have long been recognized by the decent lawyers and citizens of Colorado as a glaring intentional perversion of justice and a disgrace to the state. The decision rendered by the supreme court, reversing judgment, was based upon the fact that objection was entered by the defense against Judge Hilliard, recognized as an operators’ attorney, who had been appointed special judge by Governor Carlson to try, and convict, miners charged with crimes alleged to have been committed during the strike of 1913-14. After the trials of Lawson and Zancanelli, the supreme court handed down a decision prohibiting Judge Hilliard from trying any others of the strike cases.
The objection raised at the opening of the trial of John R. Lawson and Louis Zancanelli by lawyers for the defense—charging prejudice against Judge Hilliard and challenging his right to preside as judge, was considered sufficient cause for the reversal of judgment by the members of the supreme court. Other objections, equally as well founded, were not considered as the first objection was upheld. The defense had proof that the juries were selected from known enemies of the union miners, including several hired gunmen of the companies; that those of the jurymen who objected to rendering a verdict of guilty had been threatened with starvation, by order of the court, and one juryman in the Lawson case was told that his wife was dangerously ill, thus breaking down his opposition to the iniquitous verdict.
While the eases against John R. Lawson and Louis Zancanelli have been remanded back to Las Animas county for trial, there is little doubt but that the cases will be “nol-prossed” by the present district attorney at the first term of circuit court. Our persecuted brothers are practically free.
