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Hellraisers Journal – Monday December 12, 1904
Chicago, Illinois – Mother Jones Addresses Striking Garment Workers
Mother Jones gave an address to the striking garment workers of Chicago in which she praised Chicago workers for making that city a “mighty uncomfortable” place for the employers. The garment workers have been on strike since November 19th, and they vow to continue their strike to the end.
From The Chicago Daily Tribune, December 10, 1904:
STRIKERS TO FIGHT TO END.
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Garment Workers at Mass Meeting,
Addressed by “Mother” Jones,
Make Decision to Stay Out.
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The striking garment workers, at a large meeting last night in Brand’s Hall, voted to stay out until their demands are granted in full. Addresses were made by president T. A. Rickert of the national organization, President Barney Cohen of the State Federation of Labor, “Mother” Jones, and others.”
Mother” Jones declared there was one place in the country where the workers had made it “mighty uncomfortable” for the employers, and that was Chicago. Ben Miller, said to be a picket for the Capmakers’ union, was arrested in the evening charged with assaulting Samuel Jordan, a nonunion garment worker.
[Photograph and emphasis added.]
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The mother nature which is so strong in this remarkable woman as to have given her her beautiful soubriquet is not revealed among the ordinary surroundings which come to her during her brief sojourns in Chicago, New York or Washington, but is at once ready to shine forth when she is among the workers whom she calls her children-the girls of the silk mills, the men in the coal fields, or in the humble homes among the mothers and children.
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“Mother” Jones is an old woman, perhaps about 62 years of age. Her hair is white as snow, her eyes bright blue. She has a sweet, womanly mouth, and a pink flush in her cheeks. She is robust and healthy in appearance, with a good matronly figure. In dress she is quite plain, often almost shabby; though there is a neatness, almost a daintiness, about her which always gives her an agreeable appearance.
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If there is a woman of these modern times worthy of being classed with the grand characters of history, the heroic women of the ages-Hypatia, Deborah, the Mother of the Gracchi, Veronica, Joan of Arc-that woman, in the minds of thousands of the common people of America, is the good, gray-haired woman affectionately known to them as “Mother” Jones. To the cultivated and conservative such an estimation of a woman whom they have commonly heard derided as a troublesome mischief-maker may seem an absurdity, yet history has a way of making fools of the critics.
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Mother Jones at Columbus.