Hellraisers Journal – Thursday September 27, 1900 Pennsylvania – Mother Jones Leads Army of Women from McAdoo to Coleraine
From The Philadelphia Inquirer of September 23, 1900:
Sketched on the Spot by an Inquirer Staff Artist. —————
WOMEN FIRED TO FRENZY MARCH ON MINES AND HUGGING THE WORKERS THEY FORCE THEM TO LEAVE THEIR POST ——- Females Led by Mother Jones Form a Strange and Remarkable Procession-Shouting and Waving Their Arms They Dance to Martial Music
From a Staff Correspondent.
HAZLETON, PA., Sept. 22-Unless there is a speedy close down of the mines whose operators persist in keeping them running with armed protection, there s going to be trouble in this district. When it comes, the women will be at the bottom of it. In the early hours this morning they swooped down upon Coleraine and Beaver Meadows. They were led by Mother Jones. They marched with a band at their head, the men falling back in the rear. In the journey some of the party were girls, who gave way to the wildest abandon and danced and shouted, waving their arms in the air.
On arriving at Coleraine, emotional frenzy reached its limit. The men who on their way to work were seized, When cold argument failed some of the women threw their arms about the miners’ necks and exercised all their powers of pleading. Unable to resist the demonstrative actions of the women, the miners gave in, and consented to return to their homes.
Flushed with victory, the raiding party proceeded on to Beaver Meadow. There were about a hundred women in it, and male recruits had been picked up all along the road, so that the entire aggregation numbered five or six hundred. They reached Beaver Meadow too late for any demonstration with the miners, as they were in the colliery at work.
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday September 26, 1920 -Mother Jones News for August 1920, Part II Found in Washington, D. C., Opining on Women, the Ballot, and Labor Struggles
From The Washington Times of August 29, 1920:
SEES CURE IN RIGHT VOTING ——- Victory Futile, Says 90-Year-Old Leader, If “Ownership of Bread” is Lost. ——-
“No nation can ever grow greater or more human than its womanhood and I am not expecting the millennium as a result of woman’s privilege to vote,” said Mother Jones, noted woman leader, here today.
I am anxious to see women stand aide by side with men in developing the human family, but all of the ballots in the world will not change conditions for the people’s welfare unless attention is focused upon the disease causing the trouble.
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.
Hellraisers Journal – Friday September 21, 1900 Mother Jones in Pennsylvania: Great Strike Forced by Starvation Conditions
From the Philadelphia Times of September 17, 1900:
NO “FULL DINNER PAIL” FOR ANTHRACITE MINERS
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Mother Jones Says the Great Strike Was Forced on
the Workmen by Actual Starvation and Suffering.
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Written for The Times by “MOTHER” MARY JONES, the Woman Labor Leader
CARBONDALE, September 16.
Questions have been asked by hundreds, who are not familiar with the matter, why the miners have struck. After visiting nearly every mine in the anthracite region I think I am enabled to write intelligently on the subject, and I can say truthfully that they were forced to act by starvation.
For years the wages of the men have been falling lower and lower, while the combinations of capital have been forcing the prices of the necessities of life upwards, until, taking these two facts jointly, the mine worker to-day does not get more than one-half of what he did a few years ago for his labor. In fact, the trusts and combinations have made the conditions such that the miner had to strike or starve.
In every town I have visited I found that it is with only an economy so rigid that it is unknown outside of the coal fields, that the majority of the families manage to exist at all. The “full dinner pail” is something that is unknown in this region. The term “full dinner pail” suggests plenty of meat and bread and vegetables. It suggests thorough and robust living, but as are many other things related of the mine workers, the assertion that they have such food is miserably false. The “full dinner pail” means that, though the tin may shine throughout the furnishing of a tidy house wife, inside, instead of roast beef and vegetables and other things, there are usually a couple of slices of dry bread and a small piece of ham or pork. The whole would make a poor sandwich. The wife has to strive hard to make even this meagre fare last through the month. With flour fifteen per cent. higher than four years ago, beef ten per cent. higher, sugar two and three cents a pound more, pork ten per cent. higher, and all other food as costly, and with average wages down to less than one dollar a day for the year around, the readers of The Times have the real cause of the strike.
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday September 20, 1900 Mother Jones in Pennsylvania: Women Stand Ready for the Strike
From the Philadelphia Times of September 15, 1900:
WOMEN IN FAVOR OF THE STRIKE ————— Wives, Daughters and Sweethearts of Miners Are as Much in Earnest as the Men. ——-
Dictated for The Times by MOTHER MARY JONES, the Great Woman Labor Leader. ——-
Mahanoy City, September 14.
Since my departure from Hazleton I have made a point of visiting every coal mining village in the whole coal mining district from Shamokin to Pittston, and I have found that the spirit of the mothers, wives, sisters and daughters of the men who are going to quit work on Monday [September 17th] is Spartan in steadfastness. All who know the effect of strikes are aware that families suffer just the same as do the men themselves, and when the women of the coal fields are willing for a strike to take place one can decide that the struggle will be one that a great money power will have hard work to win.
I have found that the 200,000 women and girls who will be involved in the strike were just as much determined as were the men folks. They advised that the strike take place, a fact that certainly is unusual, and one on which I base my belief that this strike is bound to be a success. As a rule long established, women have been found against anything that might tend to create disturbances between the men and coal operators, but this time they are behind the mine workers, heart and soul, and will stand out to the last. They will put courage into the hearts of the weaklings and will sustain the determination of the more dogged.
The support of a wife or mother is a great factor in any contest. When women of the household have reproach in their eyes, when they continually din into the ears of the men on strike that they had no right to quit work, it is safe to say that the strike will not last long.
Another thing that I have seen is that the women have been quietly preparing for the strike as well as the men. The flour barrel in every little home is filled, and in the more prosperous households an extra barrel has been laid away. Provision chests and closets are well stored. Winter clothing is ready. Stout feminine hearts have prepared as well as they have been able.
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday September 19, 1900 Locust Gap, Pennsylvania – Mother Jones Speaks to Determined Miners
From The Philadelphia Inquirer of September 14, 1900:
MINERS WAITING AND HOPING ——- In the Shamokin Region They Do Not Want to Strike ——-
From a Staff Correspondent.
SHAMOKIN, Pa., Sept. 13.-“We are waiting now-waiting and hoping that the mine operators will change their minds and hold a conference with the mine workers.”
If John Fahy, president of the Ninth district of the United Mine Workers, had spent hours in thinking it over he could not have put into more epigrammatic form the sentiment of his fellow-officials and the men they represent. The hardest fighter is ever the man who is pushed into a corner and forced to fight against his will. He will fight to a finish. He will fight so long as he can stand. That is the condition of affairs in the anthracite coal region to-day. The men do not want to strike, and no one is more anxious to avoid a strike than President John Mitchell. But the silent determination written in large letters upon the faces of the men as they answer the query: “Will you go out on Monday if no settlement is arrived at?” tells the truth more plainly than any words…..
This evening Mother Jones was one of the speakers at a mass meeting at Locust Gap, about seven miles from here, where it is said the men are not so well organized as in other sections…..
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday September 18, 1910 Mother Jones News Round-Up for August 1910, Part II: -Found Speaking to Mine Workers at Shenandoah, Pennsylvania
From the Shenandoah Evening Herald of August 27, 1910:
MOTHER JONES WAS IN SCOLDING MOOD —————
“Mother” Jones was the big noise at the open air mass meeting of mine workers at Main and Centre streets last night, and despite her seventy-five years of terrestrial pilgrimage she was in excellent physical trim.
“Never felt better In my life,” she said to a friend who commented upon her fine appearance, and added,
You know I’m good for seventy-five more years. I don’t think I’ll ever die, so long as I want to live.
“Mother” Jones was in fine voice and the verbal lambasting she administered to John Mitchell, former head of the United Mine Workers of America, ex-President Roosevelt and President Taft caused her hearers “to sit up and take notice,” as the phrase goes when something surprising and unexpected is sprung on an unsuspecting audience. There were other speakers, but “Mother” Jones was the attraction, and she certainly furnished the necessary entertainment, but her denunciation of John Mitchell as a traitor to the cause of labor did not gain her many sympathizers. She excoriated Mitchell for hobnobbing with Roosevelt and declared that both Mitchell and Roosevelt were the “two biggest bluffs at large.” She found fault with Bishop Hobin, of Scranton, for a humorous reference of the Bishop’s at a dinner to Roosevelt and Mitchell that it was the first time he had the honor of sitting between two presidents. She was quite emphatic in utterance and her oratory was attended by the usual gesticulations so familiar during the troublous times of some years ago.
She was more rabid of utterance last night than on any former occasion in this region, and she waved red-flag sentiments with defiance.
Speaking of the State Police she declared they were patterned after the Irish Constabulary.
[She fairly shrieked:]
I was six years old when I was driven from home at the bayonet point by the constabulary in Ireland, and I have never forgot it, and never shall.
I’d sooner go to heaven with a union card as a passport than as a pious Christian of the employer class who have accumulated their millions by grinding the lives out of the down trodden women and children.
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday September 17, 1910
Mother Jones News Round-Up for August 1910, Part I:
-Found in Hazleton Coal District Addressing Miners’ Meetings
From the Pittston Gazette of August 3, 1910:
“Mother Jones.”
“Mother Jones,” the miners’ friend, is spending some time in the Hazleton district, recuperating from a severe illness, and nearly every evening addresses a meeting of mine workers.
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[Photograph added.]
From the Pottsville Republican of August 4, 1910:
Socialists to Observe Labor Day.
At a meeting of the Socialists of Pottsville held last evening in the barber shop of C. F. Foley arrangements were made to hold a big celebration here on Labor Day. Fred Warren, editor of the Appeal to Reason, will be the speaker of the occasion. Mother Jones will also be in attendance. The meeting will be held at Schuettler’s grove at the western end of Pottsville. Dancing will be one of the attractions of the day. Mr. Foley announced that his declination to run for lieutenant governor had been favorably acted. upon.
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From the Shenandoah Evening Herald of August 12, 1910:
Will Go to Dubois Next.
“Mother” Jones the United Mine Workers organizer, who is stopping at Hazleton with Mr. and Mrs. Charles Gildea, will go from Hazleton to Dubois. She expects to stay at Hazleton for several weeks yet, part of which time she will spend in the Panther Creek sub-district.
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