McMcDowel County WV – WE NEVER FORGET

Quote Mother Jones Princeton WV Speech Aug 15, 1920, Steel Speeches, p230 ———-

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday September 25, 1920
-Mother Jones News for August 1920, Part I
Found in Princeton, West Virginia, Speaking Near Baldwin-Felts HQ

From The Richmond Daily Register of August 6, 1920:

“Mother” Jones has reached the West Virginia mines and is said to be responsible for much of the recent trouble started there.

August 15, 1920 – Princeton, West Virginia
-Mother Jones Speaks at Public Meeting:

[Part I]

My friends, in all the ages of man the human race has trod, it has looked forward to that mighty power where men could enjoy the right to live as nature intended that they should.

We have not made millionaires, but we have made billionaires on both sides of the house. We have built up the greatest oligarchy that the world has ever known in history.

On the other side, we have the greatest slaves the world has ever known. There is no getting away from that.

I am not going to abuse the operators nor the bosses for their system. The mine owners and the steel robbers are all a product of the system of industry. It is just like an ulcer, and we have got to clean the ulcer.

(Hissing from the audience.)

God—they make me sick. They are worse than an old bunch of cats yelling for their mother.

Today, the world has turned over. The average man don’t see it. The ministers don’t see it and they don’t see what is wrong. They cannot see it. But the man who sits in the tower and his fortune of clouds clash, knows there is a cause for those clouds clashing before the clap of thunder comes. All over the world is the clashing of clouds. In the office, the doctor don’t pay attention to it. The man who watches the clouds don’t understand it. People want to watch the battle.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for August 1920, Part I: Found Speaking at Princeton, West Virginia, Near Baldwin-Felts HQ” →

Quote Mother Jones Princeton WV Speech Aug 15, 1920, Steel Speeches, p230 ———-

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday August 19, 1920
West Virginia – Mother Jones Speaks at Princeton, West Virginia, Part III

August 15, 1920 – Princeton, West Virginia
-Mother Jones Speaks at Public Meeting, Part III of III:

I am going to pay McDowell County a visit. They can put me in jail if they want to, but I don’t care, as I can always command more respect when I am in jail.

I knew young Al Baldwin 20 years ago. There were two Baldwins that I knew well, and if anything went wrong, they would come and tell me. One time when I went to Pocahontas the woman didn’t want to give me a room in the hotel, and young Baldwin said, “Yes, you will, give her my room.” I shall always appreciate those two men, but I want to tell you, since you became murderers—since these men are being robbed out of the coal they dig, so that we and our children have been deprived of the necessaries of life, and out of the money of which you are robbed, these Baldwin-Felts men are paid. That wasn’t done in the slavery days. The black slaves were fed and protected, and if they were sick, they were taken care of. [With all due respect to Mother Jones, this is an absurd statement: the enslaved were under the watchful eye of their master, not to protect them, but to maintain their enslavement; they were fed and cared for only in as much as that care profited their master.]

When you have as much American blood in you as the mule has, then you will be a man. I am ashamed of you. You miserable cowards. When you—you miserly un-American fellows making your living this way. You are staying where your brothers were murdered. You have to be a man to protect your brothers.

By God, I am not afraid of the Baldwin-Felts thugs. I would tell Uncle Sam straight that if he doesn’t clean them up, we will.

In 28 years the voice from labor was never raised [at Homestead]. I said to the boys, we have got to go in, and they told me they would put me in jail, and I told them that we built the jails and we had a perfect right to be put in them. Three of us went in to the steel workers. One fellow got up and told us that we were under arrest and told us to get out. I said, “Don’t you know that God Almighty never made a man that knew how to coop a woman up.” They didn’t know that anyone in the world would dare talk to the Chief of Police like that.

We were taken up to jail [August 20, 1919] and 8,000 steel workers gathered around the jail in about eight hours. There were 8,000 men there. I told them to hell with old Carnegie and all the robbers of the country. I went up to headquarters at Boston and told them not to fear the Bolsheviks, the Reds or the I. W. W. because the trouble was that the police were serving the capitalists.

But I don’t bother with them fellows.

I talk to Uncle Sam. It is up to you men not to be afraid of the newspaper men. Stand up like Americans. Join the union. Do you belong to the United Mine Workers? Say, “Yes, I do.” Put on your hat like an American.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Speaks at Princeton, W. V.-Near Headquarters of Baldwin-Felts Gunthugs, Part III” →