Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for March 1912, Part II: Found Speaking in Spokane, Washington and in Missoula and Butte, Montana

16th April 202218th April 2022 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote Mother Jones, Awaken to Power, Spk Chc p6, Mar 28, 1912 —————

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday April 16, 1912
Mother Jones News Round-Up for March 1912, Part II
Found in Spokane, Washington and in Missoula and Butte, Montana

From The Daily Missoulian of March 28, 1912:

From the Spokane Daily Chronicle of March 28, 1912:

WOMAN SUFFRAGE, BAH! SAYS MOTHER
———-
“Mother Jones” Has No Use
for Equal Rights Issue.
———-

“Woman suffrage-bah! The mere thought of the movement makes me tired.”-“Mother” Jones.

“Mother” Jones, who has championed the interests of working men, women and children for over a quarter century and who has promoted strikes in various sections of the nations is a socialist but by no means a suffragist.

[She asserted at Machinists’ union headquarters this afternoon:]

The woman’s place is in the home, molding the character of her children, if she has any, and preparing them to meet the issues that will confront them later in life-educating them to the economic problems that affect them,” she asserted at Machinists’ union headquarters this afternoon.

Why, the men haven’t learned yet to vote intelligently and just the same as men are now selling out their votes for a schooner of beer to cunning politicians, the woman’s vote will be influenced with a bouquet or a box of candy.

Calls It Worthless Cause.

Women are simply wasting their time upon a worthless cause in their struggle for the ballot, for as soon as the economic system has become straightened out the way it ought to be, woman will be the equal of man anyway.

That time will come when the great army of working people have become awakened to their power and have taken possession of the machinery of production and the greedy capitalistic class that is now grinding out the lives of the little children of the poor for profit have been made to step down and out.

The employing class is scared almost to death of the working men and women of the nation right now, and if the workers only knew it, they would not be in want over night.

While the working people of the world are no more than a day or two from the poorhouse the year round, as a rule, the poodle doge of the rich are having banquets given in their honor and are treated better than children of the poor.

Prohibitionists say that the prevalence of the drinking habit among the working people is the cause of so much poverty, yet government statistics show that the average workingman has but $12 a year to spend for such luxuries as an occasional drink of liquor.

She 80 Years Old.

All over the nation the working people are gradually waking up and though I will be 80 years old on the first of May, I hope to see the time that the economic system has changed completely and that the working class is in power.

“Mother” Jones spoke in behalf of the striking shopmen on the Harriman railway system Wednesday night at the armory building and will leave tonight over the Great Northern for the east, expecting to be in Minneapolis in a short time.

Despite her advanced age, “Mother Jones is a splendid specimen of vigor and health and her voice is still steady and strong.

—————

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Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for March 1912, Part I: Found Speaking in Illinois, Denver, Colorado and Tacoma, Washington

15th April 202218th April 2022 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote Mother Jones Master Class Creates Violence, LA Rec p4, Dec 21, 1911 —————

Hellraisers Journal – Monday April 15, 1912
Mother Jones News Round-Up for March 1912, Part I
Found in Illinois, Denver, Colorado and Tacoma, Washington

From The Sibley Journal of March 1, 1912:

Walker to Head Miners.

The closing day of the Illinois Mine Workers’ state convention was featured by the announcement of election from the vote held December 14, 1911.

It was generally thought at that time that all the officers would be re-elected. There was but one exception in this, Paul Smith defeating Adolph Germer for the vice presidency. President Walker and Secretary Treasurer McDonald were re-elected by large majorities…..

Aside from the announcement of the election results, a two-hour address by ”Mother” Jones, a woman, eighty years old, who is a Socialist lecturer of national prominence and called the “Miners’ Mascot,” in which she denounced woman suffrage, was the feature. She declared that women are not mentally equipped to acquire a proper knowledge of politics, and she attributed the defeat of the recall in Colorado to the women voters. In closing her address, “Mother” Jones detailed the conditions brought about by the railroad strike in Colorado and asked the miners of Illinois to donate a benefit fund of $1,000 to the strikers. A committee was named to investigate the matter…..

[Photograph added.]

From The Illinois State Journal of March 2, 1912:

From the Denver Rocky Mountain News of March 5, 1912:

NORTHERN COLORADO COAL
STRIKE ENDS IN 8 MINES
———-

6 KILLED, 10 MAIMED 100 BEATEN,
BLOODY RECORD OF WAR
———-
Strikebreakers’ Refusals to Quit Fields Cause
of Most Serious Outbreaks.
———-

“Six men killed, ten maimed for life and more than 100 waylaid and beaten.” This is the record of bitterness between the opposing forces of the labor war in the Northern coal were from the ranks of both strikers and strike breakers…..

One of the striking features of the struggle occurred a few months ago, when “Mother Jones,” a well known national figure in the labor world, went into the district to organize the wives and sisters of the striking miners. She received an enthusiastic reception, but when the women attempted to carry out their ideas the strikers objected so strenuously that they were forced to abandon their militant plans for a campaign.

———-

From the Denver United Labor Bulletin of March 21, 1912:

“MOTHER” JONES LEAVES DENVER.
———-

“Mother” Jones, who has been in Denver for several days, addressed the Federated Shopmen in their convention in Machinists’ hall this week. She is preparing to tour the northwest in the interests of the shopmen. She will go to Tacoma and then travel East as far as St. Paul.

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Hellraisers Journal: Photographs at Scene of Jed, West Virginia, Mine Disaster; Women and Children Waiting, Day after Day

14th April 202215th April 2022 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote Mother Jones WV Miners Conditions, ISR p179 , Sept 1901 —————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday April 14, 1912
Jed, West Virginia – Photographs at Scene of Mine Disaster

From The Coming Nation of April 13, 1912:

Day after day waiting for news from the entombed miners-Photo by A. P. Risser

—–

Carrying out one of the 85 victims of the explosion-Photo by Paul Thompson, N. Y.

—–

General view of the town of Jed, W. Va. Scene of the Disaster-Paul Thompson, N. Y.

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Hellraisers Journal: Joe Hill Speaks on Behalf of California Free Speech League at San Francisco Building Trades Temple

13th April 202213th April 2022 Janet RayeFree Speech Fights

Quote Joe Hill, General Strike, Workers Awaken, LRSB Oct 1919 —————

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday April 13, 1912
San Francisco, California – Joe Hill Speaks on Conditions in San Diego Jail

From the Spokane Industrial Worker of April 11, 1912:

FREE SPEECH DOINGS IN CALIFORNIA

(By Caroline Nelson).

The free speech protest in Building Trades hall Last Sunday [March 31] was a great success; $175 were collected to carry on the fight in San Diego.

Austin Lewis delivered one of his masterly addresses. He showed that street speaking of the I. W. W.’s was an absolute necessity. Without street speaking the migratory worker could not be reached, because he would not go to any hall. Without street speaking there would have been no organization among the lumber workers and section laborers, and therefore no strikes or fights for better conditions. In street speaking pamphlets, circulars and propaganda sheets are given out and find their way to camps where they do their work.

The last speaker was a released speaker from San Diego, Fellow Worker Hill. He explained that he had just come from the hospitality of the M. & M. [Merchants and Manufacturers Association] in San Diego, that owing to that hospitality he was physically unable to make any lengthy speech. He looked as though he had just risen from a sick bed. His face was pale and pinched. Dressed in overalls he bespoke the low standard of living that our modern civilization imposes upon our most intelligent workers; for he spoke more intelligently and eloquently than many a widely heralded upper class jaw smith, who has had nothing to do all his life but to wag his tongue and to look up references. He nailed the widely circulated lie that the upper class have bought out all the workers who have any intelligence, and that every intelligent man can get work.

Fellow Worker told how they practiced sabotage in San Diego in the jail in the form of building battle ships, as they called it, by hammering on the iron doors. The court was located on the second story over the jail and terrible noise made by the hungry prisoners prevented them from holding a session in the upper region. They sent word down to the prisoners to be quiet or they couldn’t hold court. The prisoners’ replied that it was their intention that no court should be held until they were fed.

Hill brought down the house when he proposed that the army of fifty thousand unemployed of San Francisco move on the San Diego, to free the men now in jail there which the M. & M. intend to railroad to the pen. The San Diego jail and bull pen are full now. They are running up the expenses of the tax-payers fearfully and an army of invaders would scare them stiff, and prevent the sending of the ten men now on trial to the penitentiary. But unless something was done quickly these men would be sent over the road; for there is nothing our ruling class doesn’t dare when it comes to strike terror to the hearts of the workers. They violate every law on the statute books, and trample in the dust every human right that is supposed to be sacred. They hold no law sacred except when it protects them in their piracy.

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Hellraisers Journal: Michael Hoey, Martyr of San Diego Free Speech Fight, Funeral Oration by Laura Payne Emerson

12th April 202212th April 2022 Janet RayeFree Speech Fights

Quote Laura Payne Emerson Make This Hell a Heaven, Ind Pnr p12, Mar 1921 —————

Hellraisers Journal – Friday April 12, 1912
Farewell Tribute for Michael Hoey, Martyr of San Diego Free Speech Fight

From the Spokane Industrial Worker of April 11, 1912:

——-

MICHAEL HOEY–MARTYR

(By Laura Payne Emerson).

Fellow Workers: I count it an honor to be accorded the privilege of paying a tribute, on this occasion, to our martyred dead fellow-worker, Michael Hoey. He was a soldier in the war for industrial freedom. Early in life he joined the forces that were making for better conditions for his class, the working class, and to the day when he fell mortally wounded, and was carried from the field of battle, never did he falter.

It was in San Diego, Cal. A fight for free speech was on. An infamous ordinance had been passed by the common council denying the natural and constitutional right of free speech and public assembly to certain citizens. Many brave souls had undertaken to test the odious law by attempting to speak on the streets, and had met the policeman’s club and the jail. Among those on the fire line in that contest was Michael Hoey, a man sixty-three years of age. When told by a friend that he was too old to enlist in such a fight, and that he should leave it to younger and more vigorous men, he replied:

I have nothing to give but myself and life is not worth living
when all liberty is gone.

That night, amid a cheering crowd, his fine face appeared for a moment, while his voice was raised in a last appeal to his class to stand firm for human rights! Then!! Burly guardians of the law snatched him down, and with kicks and clubs, jail and starvation, silenced his voice forever.

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Hellraisers Journal: From the Appeal to Reason: Michael Hoey, Murdered by Jailers, Martyr of San Diego Free Speech Fight

9th April 202210th April 2022 Janet RayeFree Speech Fights

—————

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday April 9, 1912
San Diego, California – Fellow Worker Michael Hoey Murdered by Brutal Jailers

From the Appeal to Reason of April 6, 1912:

LABOR WAR IN WEST
———-

By Telegraph to the Appeal.

The Sacramento Star
March 28, 1912

San Diego, Cal., March 31.-Michael Hoey died at Agnes hospital Thursday as a result of being kicked in the stomach and groin while a prisoner. The coroner’s jury refused to allow attending physicians and witnesses to testify.

The police interfered with a monster funeral parade, arresting the standard bearers and confiscating a red flag. There is great public indignation.

Fred H. Moore, attorney for the Free Speech league, published a letter to the chief of police warning him that kidnaping, deporting, beating up and horrible brutality of unbooked men must cease. Many men have been beaten insensible in cells. Joseph F. Tierman, union reporter, was slugged. Automobiles are employed in the fight against the working men and men are beaten and kicked and left twenty-five miles in the hills.

Monster mass meeting was held by trade unionists, Socialists, Industrial Workers last night and speakers were madly cheered. Moore introduced resolutions to boycott merchants who assist the masters in the fight. Fifty thousand unemployed have left San Francisco to join in the fight. Two hundred and fifty dollars was collected at the mass meeting held at Labor Temple at Los Angeles. To the present the fight has cost the city $30,000. Judge Sloan presides over the superior court and prejudiced grand jurors are admitted, among them Adam Witcher, who advised beating the speakers with pick handles and the tarring and feathering of Industrial Workers. Judge Sloan admits the findings of this jury as right, although contrary to the rulings of the supreme court in a similar case. He admits this is not justice, but says it is law.

Prisoners in the city jail are denied food and water until forced to drink from the toilet. Stool pigeon of the capitalists destroyed jail property and charged the offense to free speech prisoners. Of this there is positive proof.

The M. and M. association met in Grant hotel in December. Harrison Gray Otis being present, and decided to annihilate the Industrial Workers and Socialists in San Diego at all hazards.

The district attorney refuses to prosecute the police on the charge of murder, though backed by many affidavits. An effort will be made to have the superior court compel prosecution.

Two hundred men have just left Los Angeles for San Diego and more are coming later. A monster mass meeting will be held at Frisco labor temple tonight, some of the speakers being Fremont Adler [Fremont Older?], Austin Lewis, and J. E. Morgan. It is the first time in the history of the movement that Socialists, Industrial Workers and trade unionists are united, realizing their common cause against the effort to exterminate laborism on the coast. The capitalist press predicts conditions similar to those in England. Three hundred men, women and children have so far been arrested.

Funds are needed to carry on the fight, and should be sent to the treasurer of Free Speech League, San Diego, Cal.

H. S. SHIPPLEY

[Newsclip and emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: Children Working in the Textile Mills of Lawrence, Mass., Must Pay the Bosses for a Drink of Water

31st March 20221st April 2022 Janet RayeBread and Roses Strike of 1912

Mother Jones Quote ed, Suffer Little Children, CIR p10641, May 14, 1915 —————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday March 31, 1912
Lawrence, Massachusetts – Child Workers Must Pay Boss for Drink of Water

From The Coming Nation of March 30, 1912:

“Do you have to pay for drinking water in the mills?”
“Yes. Every two weeks I pay ten cents.”
(Excerpt from the statement of a child worker in the mills at Lawrence before the House Committee on Rules in Washington.) – Kansas City Post.

———-

[Detail:]

“Drop a nickel in the slot for a drink water.”

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Hellraisers Journal: Big Bill Haywood with Child Strikers of Lawrence, Mass: Joseph Stefanck, James George and James Marzur

30th March 202230th March 2022 Janet RayeBread and Roses Strike of 1912

Quote BBH Dream of One Big Union, Bst Glb p4, Jan 24, 1912 —————

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday March 30, 1912
Child Strikers of Lawrence, Massachusetts, with Big Bill Haywood

From the Waxahachie Daily Light (Texas) of March 23, 1912:

—–

In furtherance of the plans by which money is raised for the benefit of the striking textile workers of Lawrence, Mass, mass meetings are being held in various cities. These gatherings are addressed by representatives of the strikers, and delegations of the younger operatives also participate. The figure at the right in the illustration is William D. Haywood, who is acting in an advisory capacity to the strikers. The boys, mill workers who appeared before the congressional investigatory at Washington as well as at New York and other mass meetings, are, from left to right Joseph Stefanck, James George and James Marzur.

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Hellraisers Journal: Eighty-Three Coal Miners Entombed after Early-Morning Explosion at Jed Mine in West Virginia

29th March 202229th March 2022 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote Mother Jones WV Miners Conditions, ISR p179 , Sept 1901 —————

Hellraisers Journal – Friday March 29, 1912
Jed, West Virginia – Eighty-Three Coal Miners Entombed

From The Fairmont West Virginian of March 26, 1912:

———–

———-

(By United Press.)

WELCH. W. Va., March 26.-Eighty-three men are entombed in the mine of the United States Coal and Coal Company at Jed, three miles from here.

An explosion of gas occurred in the mine at 7:30 o’clock this morning. Eighty-six men were at work and only three were able to reach the out- side.

Following the explosion after damp pervaded the entire workings of the mine making it impossible for immediate rescue work to be begun.

Deputy State Mine Inspector Arthur Mitchell arrived from Bluefield an hour after the explosion occurred.

Miners who had worked during the night and had gone home were roused and formed rescue parties.

It is possible that some of the imprisoned men may have escaped the explosion and may have reached a part of the mine not penetrated by the after damp.

———-

GOVERNMENT RESCUE ARE ON SCENE.

WASHINGTON, March 26.-Immediately after learning of the Jed mine disaster the United States Bureau of mines ordered two special rescue cars full of equipment to be sent to the aid of the entombed miners. The Pittsburg rescue crew is also enroute. Car No. 7 is reported to be only an hour’s run from the mine. The Pittsburg car is under the direction of Mining Engineer Dike.

———-

MINE WORKED DAY AND NIGHT.

The Jed mine worked day and night shifts employing about a hundred and fifty men, both whites and negroes.

The mine was worked on a non-union basis.

When news of the explosion spread, women and children gathered at the mouth of the mine and refused to leave, hysterically urging the the rescue parties to greater efforts.

It is not believed the mine workings are on fire.

It is thought some men may have reached pockets where they were working and closing up openings in the pockets of the main shaft may be safe.

—————

[Emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for February 1912, Part II: Four Score Hard Winters of Labor’s Heroine Described by Lawrence Todd

28th March 202229th March 2022 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote Mother Jones, No Abiding Place, WDC Hse Com Testimony, June 14, 1910 —————

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday March 28, 1912
Mother Jones News Round-Up for February 1912, Part II
The Four Score Hard Winters of Labor’s Heroine by Lawrence Todd

From The Tacoma Times of February 14, 1912:

Four Score Hard Winters Has Mother Jones Seen,
and She Is a Heroine in Labor’s Ranks Still
———-

BY LAWRENCE TODD.

“Where do you live, ‘”Mother Jones?” asked the chairman of a Congressional investigating committee of a little old woman in rusty black.

She had kindly, determined Irish features and the most piercing and confusing of blue Irish eyes. Brave, kindly, faith-inspiring eyes the old woman had, and a motherly way of speaking when she was not aroused. But this chairman was trying to defend the steel barons from the charge of enslaving their men.

“I live in the United States, sorr,” she replied.

“But where-in what state have you a home?”

“Where the big thieves are wringing their dollars out of the blood and bone of my poor, miserable people, sorr,” came back the reply, in a voice like that of an accusing judge. “Sometimes it is among the slaves of the Alabama iron mines; sometimes with the gold and silver miners of Arizona, where the Southern Pacific has fastened itself on their throats; sometimes with the boys on the northern copper range, and often in the coal miners’ shacks in Pennsylvania or West Virginia. Where you send your militia where men are shot and women driven from their homes at night by armed bullies, there I stay.”

“Mother” Jones is nearly 80 years of age. What she told the corporation congressman is literally true. For more than a generation she has been an organizer for the Western Federation of Miners and for their brothers, the United Mine Workers. Strikes she has seen and taken a part in, since she was a little girl in a southern cotton mill. Once she led 1,500 women of the coal miners’ families against a Colorado sheriff and his deputies. The sheriff for once was driven back from the strikers picket line.

At another crisis, when the children of the Philadelphia factories were crying for protection, “Mother” Jones shocked the community by organizing a great parade of 7,000 crippled and maimed boys and girls, ragged and pale, underfed and haggard as factory children always become, to march through the streets of the fashionable shopping quarter. Always she is making a fight against social wrongs. Usually she is dramatic about it. Always her warm heart and her fearless tongue, and her white forehead that has more than once been pressed by the muzzle of a deputy’s gun, endear her to the wretched people who spend their days in factories and mines.

Just now the miners have lent “Mother” to the striking stoop employes of the Harriman railroads in the western country, where she is making appeals to the women to do picket duty. Incidentally she visited the convention of the California State Building Trades council at Fresno, and urged the delegates to stand by their officials, Tveitmoe and Johannsen, indicted in connection with the alleged dynamiting conspiracy.

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Tag: March 1912

Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for March 1912, Part II: Found Speaking in Spokane, Washington and in Missoula and Butte, Montana

WOMAN SUFFRAGE, BAH! SAYS MOTHER
———-
“Mother Jones” Has No Use
for Equal Rights Issue.
———-

Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for March 1912, Part I: Found Speaking in Illinois, Denver, Colorado and Tacoma, Washington

NORTHERN COLORADO COAL
STRIKE ENDS IN 8 MINES
———-

Hellraisers Journal: Photographs at Scene of Jed, West Virginia, Mine Disaster; Women and Children Waiting, Day after Day

Day after day waiting for news from the entombed miners-Photo by A. P. Risser

Carrying out one of the 85 victims of the explosion-Photo by Paul Thompson, N. Y.

General view of the town of Jed, W. Va. Scene of the Disaster-Paul Thompson, N. Y.