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Hellraisers Journal – Sunday September 7, 1913
Southern Colorado Coal Camps – Mother Jones Arrives; Union Miners Discharged
From the Denver United Labor Bulletin of September 6, 1913:
Tag: Mother Mary Harris Jones
Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Speaks on Labor Day to Miners at Thurber, Texas; Travels by Train to Trinidad, Colorado
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Hellraisers Journal – Thursday September 4, 1913
Mother Jones Speaks to Miners at Thurber, Texas; Travels to Trinidad
From the Fort Worth Record of August 31, 1913:
From the Trinidad Chronicle-News of September 3, 1913:
Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Visits with Eugene Debs at His Home in Terre Haute, Indiana; Debs Speaks on Populism
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Hellraisers Journal – Thursday September 3, 1903
Terre Haute, Indiana – Mother Jones Spends Day as Guest of Eugene Debs
From The Cincinnati Enquirer of September 1, 1903:
ECHO OF THE PAST
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Is Populism, Says Eugene Debs, the Labor Leader.SPECIAL DISPATCH TO THE ENQUIRER
Terre Haute, August 31.-Eugene Debs, who has closed his Chautauqua engagement, spent yesterday at home, with Mother Jones as his guest. In regard to the conference at Denver to revive the Populist party, Mr. Debs says:
The committee on the exhumation of issues and galvanization of corpses reported both in a state of satisfactory preservation. There is no inspiration in a cadaver. Populism is an echo of the past, with gray whiskers on it. The Denver funeral procession and its Populist pallbearers present a sorry picture in contrast with the advancing, enthusiastic, confident, cheering, revolutionary hosts of International Socialism.
[Photographs and emphasis added.]
Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review: The Michigan Copper Miners’ Strike by Edward J. McGurty, Part II
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Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday September 2, 1913
“Copper Country” of Michigan – Striking Copper Miners Standing Firm
From the International Socialist Review of September 1913:
The Copper Miners’ Strike
By Edward J. McGurty[Part II of II]
So far [the mine operators] have been unable to intimidate the miners. The men are standing firmly. Parades are held every day along the 28 miles which comprise the range. Meetings of from three to six thousand are held every day in Calumet, Hancock, South Range and Mass City. There is no sign of weakening on the part of the men. They are determined upon a victory. They will refuse to submit to the slavery of the Copper Kings any longer. Thirty years of it has been enough.
The principal bone of contention at present is the recognition of the union. The men have made up their minds on this point. The mine-ownes have also apparently done so. The struggle is on in earnest. The miners are up against tremendous odds. They have absolute solidarity in their ranks, however, and that means a great deal. They are going to win! The copper barons are already desperate!
August 5th. The enclosed affidavit was sent to Ferris on the 29th of July and Ferris has absolutely refused to take the troops from this county. They are still in Keweenaw county at this writing.
Hon. W. N. Ferris, Governor,
Lansing, Michigan.I, John H. Hefting, sheriff of Keweenaw county, Michigan, hereby certify, that I was requested and urged by certain mining officials to call troops, and I refused as I did not see any necessity, inasmuch as there had been perfect peace and order and not a single infraction of the law committed since the strike commenced. The said mining officials urged me to get your permission to call upon General Abbey for troops, in case I needed them and not otherwise. My intention was not to call troops into this county. On July 29, 1913, several troops appeared at the boundary line, and I protested against troops being brought into this county as conditions did not require it. Whereupon one of the officers of the army stated to me that if I did not permit the troops to enter Keweenaw county at that time, that no matter how bad conditions became even though the location would burn down, they would not give any assistance thereafter. The telegram was made out by the attorney for the company and my attention was called to sign it. I requested them to give me time to consider the case at least one day, but their answer was that I must decide at once. Therefore I request you to withdraw all troops from this county.
Respectfully yours,
JOHN HEFTING,
Keweenaw County Sheriff.Subscribed and sworn to before me this day, the 29th of July, 1913. My commission expires March 4, 1917.
]. A. HAMILTON,
Notary Public.The newspapers here carried on a three-day campaign to form a “back-to-work” movement and yesterday got one of the company tools to act as chairman, surrounded on the platform by shift and trammer bosses, at a meeting called by the Calumet & Hecla Co., to appoint a committee from the workers to meet with the bosses, and as the chairman put it, find out on what terms the C. & H. would allow its employes to go back to work. The miners saw through the game immediately and refused to “fall” for the game. They started the cry of “scab” and left the hall for union headquarters.
Mother Jones arrived today [morning of August 5th] and was met at the depot by the strikers. They stood bare-headed in two lines two miles long, while she went through to the union hall. She refused to ride in an automobile which had been brought for her. Ten thousand strikers will pack the Palestra and neighboring halls tomorrow to hear her. She will then go over the range, addressing meetings in the various “locations.”
Hellraisers Journal: From Miners Magazine: Mother Jones Visits Striking Michigan Copper Miners, Received with Open Arms
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Hellraisers Journal – Friday August 15, 1913
Mother Jones in Michigan’s Copper Country, Encourages Striking Miners and Families
From the Miners Magazine of August 14, 1913:
…..“Mother” Jones, that dauntless and fearless heroine who kept alive the courage of the strikers of West Virginia and who was held a prisoner by the military authorities for several months, entered the state of Michigan last week to cheer the strikers on to victory.
Though “Mother” Jones has passed the four-score mile-post, yet her heart still beats as strongly for the rights of man as when the fire of youth flashed from her eye, and ere the strike has become a matter of history the mine operators of Michigan will know that a woman with Spartan courage can keep alive within the breast of revolting slaves the glorious flame of freedom’s purest inspiration.
The battle in Michigan must be won.
Fifty thousand men, women and children are involved in the strike and the sinews of war are needed to care for the men, women and children who have rebelled against industrial slavery.
The fight in Michigan is not only the fight of every member of the Western Federation of miners but it is the fight of every man and woman who stands beneath the folds of labor’s flag……
[Emphasis added.]
From the Miner’s Bulletin of August 14, 1913:
GEMS FROM MOTHER JONES.
The nation was founded as the result of a strike. Lincoln brought us all on a strike against black slavery; we are out on a strike against wage slavery and feudal bonds.
Sweep away all differences of nationality. You are all Americans.
We are going to quit developing muscle and develop a brain for the working class.
Stick together! Wake up! The hour is here! The dawn has come!
[Emphasis added.]
Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review: W. H. Thompson Replies to Debs Regarding Report on West Virginia
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Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday August 12, 1913
Comrade Thompson Responds to Debs Regarding Socialists’ Report on West Virginia
From the International Socialist Review of August 1913:
A Reply to Debs
[-by W. H. Thompson
Editor of Huntington Socialist and Labor Star]
Editor of the Call:
In your issue of June 28 appears an article by Comrade Eugene V. Debs, headed “Debs Denounces Vilifiers of West Virginia Committee Report.” As one of the parties referred to as “vilifiers,” I would like to answer a few of the points made in the article.
The Socialist and Labor Star bitterly condemned the committee’s report; it did not publish it, but it did give an explanation for suppressing it, in the following words: “We have never, and will never, devote any of our space to whitewashing a cheap political tool of the capitalist class, not even when the whitewash is mixed by a committee representing our own party.”
From Comrade Debs’ own words I will endeavor to prove that our condemnation of the report was justified. Our charges against the report were that it was a “weak mass of misstatements and a sickening eulogy of Dictator Hatfield.” The truth of the last clause of the charge is plainly apparent to everyone who has read the report. The truth of the first clause is well known to all who have taken the trouble to inform themselves regarding the trouble in this state.
Comrade Debs says that when the committee arrived in West Virginia more than sixty of our comrades were in jail and two of our papers were suppressed. All true. Now pay particular attention to dates. The committee arrived in West Virginia on May 17. Hatfield was inaugurated governor on March 4, something over two months previous. These comrades had been held in-or put in-jail at Hatfield’s orders, and the papers had been suppressed at his command. Mother Jones, Editor Boswell, National Committeeman Brown, and forty-six other Socialists were placed on trial before a military drumhead court-martial on March 7. On March 9, the Circuit Court of Kanawha County issued a writ forbidding the trial of these prisoners by the militia. The sheriff went into the military zone to serve this writ, only to be met by the Provost Marshal, who, acting under orders from Hatfield, forcibly prevented the serving of the papers, and the drumhead trial proceeded in defiance of the civil courts.
The report of our committee says: “It was under the administration of Glasscock, and not Hatfield, that Mother Jones, C. H. Boswell and John Brown were court-martialed and convicted.”
On April 25, the Charleston Labor Argus was confiscated, suppressed, and those suspected of being connected with it were thrown into jail. On May 9 the Socialist and Labor Star was confiscated, its plant destroyed and five of its owners jailed by order of Governor Hatfield.
Our committee’s report referring to these outrages says: “In this connection it, is but fair to say that the governor and his friends disavow knowledge of these outrages!”
According to Comrade Debs’ article, it did not take him long to discover “that a certain element was hostile to the United Mine Workers.” Apparently, however, he failed to discover that there were numerous elements hostile to Socialism. There was an element hostile to the United Mine Workers’ officials who had just leagued themselves with Hatfield and agreed upon a “settlement” of the strike, which was odious to the strikers and which they have since totally repudiated. Comrade Debs uses this “element” that was hostile to the United Mine Workers as a shield to hide behind when we attack him for whitewashing Hatfield. Then he pours out this vial of wrath upon us:
The whole trouble is that some Chicago I. W. W .-ites, in spirit, at least, are seeking to disrupt and drive out the United Mine Workers to make room for the I. W. W . and its program of sabotage.
Speaking for myself, I will say that I have never seen a real live I. W. W.-ite. If there is or has ever been such an animal in West Virginia I am blissfully unaware of the fact. However, I have heard considerable of this new species from the capitalistic press and I note that the capitalists are very hostile toward it. I consider that a good recommendation for a labor organization and will certainly not speak slightingly of it or condemn it as long as the parasites fear it, but as for the I. W. W. being responsible for the attack on the Mine Workers’ officials, who deliberately attempted to betray the Kanawha strikers, I think Comrade Debs’ fear was father to the thought.
Then Debs dramatically points to Mother Jones and John Brown as evidence that the Mine Workers’ officials are straightforward and honest, or these two class-conscious comrades would not work for them. And I come right back with the assertion that both Mother Jones and Brown have worked, not for these officials whom he so vigorously defends, but for the rank and file of the workers.
Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: Debs Denounces Critics of the S. P. A. Committee’s Report on the Investigation into West Virginia Situation
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Hellraisers Journal – Monday August 11, 1913
Debs Denounces Critics of Socialist Party’s Report on West Virginia Situation
From the International Socialist Review of August 1913:
Debs Denounces Critics
From the N. Y. Call
Terre Haute, Ind., June 27.-The National Committee of the Socialist party in its regular session in May appointed a committee of three to investigate conditions in West Virginia. That committee, of which the writer was a member, was instructed to work in harmony with the United Mine Workers.
Having completed its investigation the committee has submitted its report, and it is in reference to this report, which has been widely published, that I now have something to say in answer to those who have assailed it.
First of all I want to say that I shall make no defense of the report. It does not need defense. It will answer for itself. But I do want to show the true animus of its critics and assailants, which they have been careful not to reveal in what they have written against it.
Two or three Socialist papers have bitterly condemned the report. Not one of them published it. Each of them suppressed it. They evidently did not want their readers to see it. It was sufficient for them to condemn it.
These Socialist papers have in this instance adopted the method of the capitalist papers with which I have had so much experience. A thousand times a speech of mine has been denounced by a capitalist paper while not a line of the speech was permitted to appear. That is precisely what these Socialist papers have done with our report, and if this is fair to themselves and their readers, I am willing to let it pass.
When our committee was appointed, more than sixty of our comrades were in the bullpen, martial law was in full force, two Socialist papers had been suppressed and there was a terrible state of affairs generally. Within four days after our committee arrived upon the ground every prisoner was released, martial law was practically declared off, the suppressed papers were given to understand that they could resume at their pleasure, and the governor of the state gave his unqualified assurance that free speech, free assemblage and the right to organize should prevail and that every other constitutional right should be respected so far as lay in his power.
[Here Debs neglects to say that when the two papers were “suppressed” equipment was destroyed, for which the papers were never compensated.]
It may be that our committee had nothing to do with bringing about these changes. As to this I have nothing to say. I simply state the facts.
Soon after our arrival it became evident that a certain element was hostile to the United Mine Workers and determined to thwart the efforts of that organization to organize the miners. This is the real source of opposition to our action and to our report.
Let me say frankly here that I do not hide behind the instruction of the National Committee that we work in harmony with the United Mine Workers. I would have done this under existing circumstances without instruction.
In our report to the party, we made a true transcript of the facts as we found them. We told the truth as we saw it.
And yet we have been charged by the element in question with having whitewashed Governor Hatfield and betrayed the party.
The truth is that we opposed Governor Hatfield where he was wrong and upheld him where he was right. But Hatfield is not the reason, but only the excuse in this instance. The intense prejudice prevailing against him has been taken advantage of to discredit our report as a means of striking a blow at the United Mine Workers.
[Here Debs ignores the hardships of Hatfield’s bullpen, where his comrades were held for several months, and the court martial they faced with possible death sentences hanging over their heads. All of which may have been a source of the “prejudice prevailing against him.”]
Had we, instead of doing plain justice to Governor Hatfield, as to everyone else, painted him black as a fiend, our report would have provoked the same bitter attack from the same source unless we had denounced the officials of the United Mine Workers, without exception, as crooks and grafters and in conspiracy to keep the miners in slavish subjection.
That would have satisfied those who are now so violently assailing us. Nothing less would.
For this reason and no other we are being vilified by sabotagers and anti-political actionists, and by those who are for just enough political action to mask their anarchism.
I am an industrial unionist, but not an industrial bummereyite, and those who are among the miners of West Virginia magnifying every petty complaint against the United Mine Workers and arousing suspicion against every one connected with it, are the real enemies of industrial unionism and of the working class.
[“Bummereyite” is an insult directed against the I. W. W., who are, at this time, facing prosecutions and long prison sentences in Ipswich, Paterson, and Little Falls, not to mention fellow workers who have lost their lives in those struggles.]
I am quite well aware that there are weak and crooked officials in the United Mine Workers, but to charge that they are all traitors without exception is outrageously false and slanderous.
The whole trouble is that some Chicago I. W. W.-ites, in spirit at least, are seeking to disrupt and drive out the United Mine Workers to make room for the I. W. W. and its program of sabotage and “strike at the ballot box with an ax.”
[This charge is simply not true. The I. W W. is engaged in its own struggles at this time and in no way attempted to destroy the U. M. W. A., only offering support to those oppressed under the rule of Hatfield’s pro-operator military dictatorship. Rather than listen to local leaders, on the ground in West Virginia, Debs makes a boogeyman of I. W. W., much like the capitalist press.]
Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: W. H. Thompson on the Strike “Settlements” in West Virginia
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Hellraisers Journal – Sunday August 10, 1913
W. H. Thompson Opines on Strike Settlements in West Virginia
From the International Socialist Review of August 1913:
Strike “Settlements” in West Virginia
By W. H. Thompson
[Editor of Huntington Socialist and Labor Star]
IN an article in the July REVIEW I detailed at some length the manner in which the odious Hatfield-Haggerty “settlement” of the Kanawha strike was ”put over” on the workers by the coercion of Hatfield and the trickery of the United Mine Workers’ officials. I have received numerous letters from persons prominent in the Socialist party and in the mine workers organization severely criticizing my statements and intimating in very forceful language that I knew not of what I wrote. In justice to these writers I will say that in every instance they were citizens of other states, and, with few exceptions, have never been in West Virginia.
As proof of the accuracy of my statements made in that article I wish to chronicle the happenings in the affected zone since it was written.
The coal miners of Paint Creek and Cabin Creek have unanimously repudiated the agreement entered into for them by Hatfield-Haggerty & Co., and are again on strike. Furthermore, they have compelled Haggerty and the other compromising officials of the U. M. W. of A. to retreat from their former position as absolute dictators, and to grant to their strike a tardy official recognition.
These leaders were placed in a rather peculiar position in thus being compelled to endorse a strike against the agreement they themselves had forced upon the miners, and to “save their face” they loudly proclaimed that the coal barons had violated the provisions of the holy Hatfield Proposition and thus justified the strike.
This brought forth a hot reply from the coal operators’ association, which proved another assertion of mine, to the effect that there was nothing in the Hatfield proposition demanding any changes in their attitude toward the miners. They said in part:
“There was never any promise or agreement on our part to take back strikers or to surrender our rights of hiring or discharging men as we saw fit. We entered into no agreement with the United Mine Workers. We promised the Governor that we would do certain things toward ending the violence on Paint and Cabin Creeks. We have kept this promise in the strictest good faith and there is no foundation for any statement to the contrary.”
In regard to this Dean Haggerty made a public statement in which he said:
“Owing to my absence from the city on important business I have as yet been unable to prepare a detailed reply to the statement of the operators’ association. But I shall do so shortly and show that the Governor’s proposition has been grossly violated.”
The Dean made this promise of a “detailed statement” on June 22, but as yet he has failed to make the statement or show wherein the operators had grossly violated the Hatfield proposition. No one knows better than Haggerty that there was nothing in the proposition that the operators would have any call to violate.
In the meantime the strike in the Paint and Cabin Creek district grows in intensity, and conditions are rapidly approaching the guerilla warfare stage. The criminal mine guards are again in evidence and are using the same old tactics to stir up violence. Already one battle has taken place. This called forth from Governor Hatfield a long open letter to Sheriff Bonner Hill, he, of “armored train” fame, in which he declared that if the civil authorities could not preserve peace in the strike zone they should resign. He also intimated that he might summarily remove such officials as were lax in their duties. When it is remembered that Hatfield tried to “preserve peace” up there with the entire state army and failed, and that he has not as yet resigned his office, his advice appears a little premature, to say the least.
The New River “Settlement”
It would seem to the casual observer that Haggerty & Co. would have learned a few things from their failure to “put over” the now infamous Kanawha Settlement, but, alas, they belong to that specie of old line craft union leaders who never learn and never change. At the very time the Kanawha miners were repudiating the agreement entered into for them by these gentlemen, Haggerty, Hatfield and the New River operators were concocting another settlement prescription to be used upon the restless and dissatisfied New River miners.
This proposition, which was agreed upon by the gentlemen who drew it up, was meant for no other purpose than to chloroform the growing spirit of unrest among the miners in this field and to keep them producing coal to fill the contracts of the Kanawha operators whose mines are closed by the strike there.
The New River agreement is a replica of the infamous Hatfield proposition to settle the Kanawha strike. The workers realize absolutely nothing from its acceptance. And to effectually prevent the miners from ever gaining any concessions under it the following clause is appended:
“Sixth-All matters of dispute, with reference to the above proposition, as between the individual operator and miners in each mine in the New River and Virginia districts, to be referred to a commission of four, two of whom are to be selected by the operators and two by the miners neither of whom are to be interested in mines or mining, either directly or indirectly, and that where a controversy arises, both operator and miner may appear before the said board, and the board, after hearing the evidence from both sides, shall render a decision, and any decision signed by any three of said board shall be final and binding on both operators and miners. Should said board be unable to reach a majority decision, then they shall take the matter to the governor of the state, who shall act as umpire and whose decision shall be final and binding on both operators and miners, and there shall be no appeal therefrom.”
See any chance for the real interested parties, the coal miners, having any say in matters of dispute?
Bear in mind, please, that this agreement, contract, settlement or whatever it is, was never submitted to the miners for their acceptance or rejection. It was accepted for them by the wise Christian leaders whom God and the United Mine Workers of America sent here to act for them. And their interests are further protected Umpire Hatfield from whose decision no appeal can be taken.
Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones, Joseph and Laura Cannon Speak to Striking Miners and Families in Michigan Copper Country
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Hellraisers Journal – Saturday August 9, 1913
Michigan’s Copper Country – “Fiery” Mother Jones and the Cannons on the Scene
From the Escanaba Morning Press of August 8, 1913:
COPPERDOM IN DREAD
CRISIS IS IMPENDING
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Houghton, Mich., Aug 7.-The general impression in the district affected by the copper mine workers’ strike is that a crisis impending through the presence of Mother Jones and Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Cannon, three fiery orators of the Western Federation of Miners. Persons who have had an opportunity in other strikes to see these people in action say they likely to inflame the strikers and their families to such a pitch of enthusiasm as may result in a reoccurrence of the of the first week of the strike.
The leaders of the strike here, Messrs. Mahoney, Miller and Lowney, have counselled peace in all their recent speeches, have the strikers to preserve law and order and to wait with determination because they are going to win.
But the speeches made by Cannon and his wife [Laura Gregg Cannon] at the Kansankoti hall, Hancock, Tuesday night were certainly not pacific. They aroused more enthusiasm than any speakers previously heard here since the strike opened and gave a good forecast of the result of their later speeches.
The strikers are for the most part phlegmatic Huns, Croatians and Finns, members of races not given to vociferous outbursts. If the Jones and the Cannons of the strike forces can stir these people up something more exciting than has been seen in the past week may be expected.
Mother Jones and Mrs. Cannon have reputations for exciting the women of strike districts to a point of frenzy resulting in rioting. Something of this sort is feared.
An example of the dangerous potentiality in Mother Jones can be seen in the interview given out by her at Calumet Tuesday afternoon [August 5th]. She said:
I’m a socialist, Why shouldn’t I be? That is the party that stands ready to help the working man.
I can’t see the need for the militia. Take a plumber and make him a major and he swells up like a toad and seems to forget that he is a workingman. The struggle is between the employer and employee and the state ought to let them fight it out. The strikers don’t believe in damaging property or the destruction of lives and I always impress on the men that they shouldn’t do damage.
They threw me into the bull pen in West Virginia, but before then, I went with 16 representatives of the miners to see the governor. When they heard I was coming, the governor wired for the fire department and the police and the legislators crawled under their desks and cried, “Is she coming?” The firemen came running up the streets without their socks. I had the devil scared out of the whole bunch of sewer rats. An old woman like me, over 80 years old. They thought I was coming to murder them, I guess.
What do you think the charge was they arrested me on. Stealing a field gun, my dears, and the damn fools were looking for it in the hills for months.
Ah, boys this is a terrible thing to go through. I hope you don’t see the like here. I saw my brave boys, who I know would not commit a crime, taken from their homes to far-away jails while their wives and babies screamed for their husbands. I raised my hand to heaven and prayed for their safe return.
And they talk about the red flag, bless you. Why, don’t they know the red flag was the first flag hoisted at Lexington, that a farmer who didn’t have time to put his shirt on went into the ranks of the bloody Sassenachs [English persons] and waved his red shirt in the air to cheer his comrades. Don’t they know the red bar is the first on the flag, signifying that blood was shed for the union?
Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Arrives in Michigan’s Copper Country to Support WFM Strikers, Greeted by Great Throng
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Hellraisers Journal – Friday August 8, 1913
Copper Country, Keweenaw Peninsula, Michigan – Mother Jones Arrives
From The Calumet News of August 5, 1913:
[……]
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