Hellraisers Journal – Saturday June 18, 1910
Washington D. C. – Mother Jones Before House Rules Committee, Part II
Washington D. C., June 14, 1910-During the morning session of the Hearings before the House Rules Committee on H.J. Res. 201, “Providing for a Joint Committee To Investigate Alleged Persecutions of Mexican Citizens by the Government of Mexico,” Mother Jones continued her testimony as follow:
STATEMENT OF MRS. MARY JONES
[Part II of II.]
Lebanon Daily News June 15, 1910
I left there [Arizona] then, but in 1908, immediately after the campaign. I learned from those men in jail at Los Angeles their condition [Ricardo Flores Magon, Librado Rivera, and Antonio I. Villareal]. They were without money, without aid, and I felt that they were just like Kosciuszko, Carl Schurz, Kossuth, and Garibaldi, and men of that kind, who received protection in our country from the tyrannical governments which they fled from, and I felt they were entitled to some protection, and that if they were without money, but were in the fight for liberty, a fight against the most bloody tyrant that has been produced, I would protect them; and so, although I was not in very good health, I went out and raised $4,000. I sent it West to get stenographers, hire attorneys, and bring witnesses to Tombstone, Arizona, where they were to be tried. I did not expect any great amount of mercy from the court at Tombstone, because Judge Doan is not very humane man. People who are feasting and eating and drinking with those who own the fleshpots of Egypt are not generally very humane characters. But I still felt that probably through the efforts we were making, and the publicity we were giving it, they would not be turned over to be murdered, and if they could be saved from being murdered that would satisfy me, knowing that some day we would get them out of the clutches of the tyrant. And so they were tried and sentenced to eighteen days in Yuma. From there they were moved to the new prison.
Hellraisers Journal – Friday June 17, 1910
Washington D. C. – Mother Jones Before House Rules Committee, Part I
Washington D. C., June 14, 1910-During the morning session of the Hearings before the House Rules Committee on H.J. Res. 201, “Providing for a Joint Committee To Investigate Alleged Persecutions of Mexican Citizens by the Government of Mexico,” Mother Jones was called to the stand by Congressman William B. Wilson of Pennsylvania. Mother testified as follow:
Mr. Wilson: Mr. Chairman, I would like to have Mother Jones speak. The Chairman [Representative John Dalzell of Pennsylvania]:
Mother Jones, please give the stenographer your name and residence.
STATEMENT OF MRS. MARY JONES
[Part I of II.]
Lebanon Daily News June 15, 1910
[Questioned by Chairman Dalzell:]
My name is Mary Jones. I live in the United States, but I do not know exactly in what place, because I am always in the fight against oppression, and wherever a fight is going on I have to jump there, and sometimes I am in Washington, sometimes in Pennsylvania, sometimes in Arizona, sometimes in Texas, and sometimes up in Minnesota, so that really I have no particular residence…No abiding place, but wherever a fight is on against wrong, I am always there. It is my pleasure to be in the fray.
[Mr. Wilsonquestions Mother about the kidnapping of Manual Sarabia from Douglas, Arizona, during summer of 1907:]
I was in Arizona at that time. We had a strike on there with the Philip Dodge copper interest. The smelters, the men, or the slaves, rather, working in the smelters, had not been organized, and I went down there in Douglas to help organize those workers.
[Wilson asks Mother if she would rather sit down] I am so accustomed to standing when I am talking that I am uncomfortable when sitting down. That is too easy. [Laughter.]
Well, I was holding a meeting on the streets of Douglas on Sunday night for the workers that were in the smelters. An automobile was run out from the jail, from what I learned afterwards and this young Sarabia was thrown into it.
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday June 16, 1910
Washington, District of Columbia – Mother Jones Denounces Diaz
From The San Francisco Call of June 15, 1910:
“MOTHER” JONES DENOUNCES DIAZ
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Mexican Refugees Persecuted
by American Officers,
She Tells House Committee
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Writer Declares Los Angeles Detectives
Open Private Letters in Postoffice
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Lebanon Daily News June 15, 1910
WASHINGTON, June 14.—”Mother” Jones addressed the rules committee of the house today in behalf of the Mexican refugees, who, it is alleged, are being persecuted in the United States through the agencies of American officers and Mexican government “spies.”
Mrs. Jones related that while she was in Douglas, Ariz., addressing a meeting of “the unorganized slaves who work in the smelters,” she witnessed the kidnaping of a Mexican refugee [Manuel Sarabia], who, she said, was seized, strangled, thrown into an automobile and carried across the line into Mexico.
“Mother” Jones denounced President Diaz of Mexico for sending “his hirelings across the border to crush the constitution of our country.”
John Kenneth Turner, a magazine writer, and John Murray, a newspaper writer, continued their testimony. The offering of evidence was finished today and the committee will decide within a few days whether an investigation by congress shall be recommended.
Murray testified to the opening of his own mail and that of a large number of other persons by the American authorities.
Turner said he had discovered city detectives in the Los Angeles postoffice examining the mail of Mexican residents there. He also told of the suppression by the authorities of many small newspapers published by Mexican refugees in various cities in Texas, California and Arizona.
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday June 12, 1910
Mother Jones News Round-Up for May 1910, Part II:
-Found Continuing Fight for Milwaukee Brewery Girls and Mexican Comrades
From Missouri’s Scott County Kicker of May 14, 1910:
OF INTEREST TO WOMEN.
Perhaps the noblest woman in America today is “Mother Jones.” From a school teacher she consecrated her life to the cause of oppressed humanity, and where-ever the fight is thickest, there is Mother Jones-some 70 years old. Jails have no terror for her. She champions the freedom of all the race-men and women alike. In a recent speech at Milwaukee she said to the women:
Put away your parlor airs and get out into the street and fight, fight, fight! It may not be ladylike, but it is womanly. God made woman; rotten society made the lady.
[Photograph added.]
From the Appeal to Reason of May 14, 1910:
Mexican Refugees Left to Their Fate
Mother Jones and others made strenuous efforts to secure an investigation of the cases of Magon, Villareal and other Mexicans imprisoned in American bastiles at the instance of the tyrant of Mexico and the interest of American investment in that land. Resolutions were introduced into congress asking for such investigation. Now the resolutions have been recommended unfavorably by the judiciary committee before which they went, and that with a pointed insult to American labor and patriotism.
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday June 11, 1910
Mother Jones News Round-Up for May 1910, Part I:
-Found Speaking in Sioux City, Iowa, and Fort Wayne, Indiana
From The Sioux City Journal of May 2, 1910:
FIGHTING WORKERS NEEDED.
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Mother Jones Says Capitalism Drives
Laboring Men to Drink.
We don’t get the philosophy we want from the preachers, that is why we don’t go to church.
-declared Mother Jones, known country wide as a battler for the cause of the working man, during her address before a large socialistic audience at Bennett’s hall last night.
[She continued:]
Ministers never work. We need fighting workers now.
Mother Jones is well advanced in years and small in stature. In her opinion the capitalistic class owns the officials, the policemen and the ministers. She has her own theory regarding prohibition. She figures the antisaloon leagues are going at the question from the wrong side. In her opinion the factories in which the working men toil away their lives and the hardships imposed upon them by the capitalistic class drive them to drink, and it is through a radical change from this source that temperance will come.
The speaker said the womanhood of the nation is sinking slowly but gradually because girls and women are forced from home to sweatshops, where also may be found little children. When the history of this age is written, in her opinion, it will go down on the books as the most corrupt of all times. If the women would assert themselves she believes the trouble of the working man would be cleared up over night.
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday May 30, 1920
Logan County, West Virginia – Coal Operators Own Public Officials, Part I
From The Nation of May 29, 1920:
Private Ownership Of Public Officials
By ARTHUR GLEASON
[Part I of II.]
Harrisburg Telegraph October 16, 1919
WEST VIRGINIA has started in again on the organized killing which every few years breaks loose in the mining districts. On May 19, eleven men were shot to death in the town of Matewan, Mingo County. Seven of them were detectives, three were miners and one was an official. This skirmish is the first in the 1920 war between the coal operators of the State and the United Mine Workers of America. Mingo is one of the counties in the southwest of the State which have been held against organized labor by detectives, armed guards, and deputy sheriffs.
With the beginning of May, the miners formed local unions, and brought in 2,000 members. As fast as the miners join the union, the coal companies are evicting them from the company-owned houses. I saw the typewritten notice of the Stone Mountain Coal Company on the window of the company-owned grocery store. It stated that the houses of the miners were owned by the company, and that the miners must leave the premises at once if they join the union. Ezra Frye, the local organizer, acting for the United Mine Workers, had leased land, and was erecting tents for the evicted families. He had ordered 300 tents on the first allotment. Matewan lies on the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy River. It is run politically by the Hatfield clan, who for generations have had a feud with the McCoy clan. The economic struggle is making a new alignment across the old feudist divisions. No stranger is safe just now in these unorganized counties. We had a spy who trailed us from Charleston to Matewan. In the town, we were kept under constant guard.
Hellraisers Journal – Friday May 20, 1910
Mother Jones News Round-Up for April 1910, Part II:
-Found in Washington D. C. Berating Author of Dick Military Law
From the Duluth Labor World of April 30, 1910:
MOTHER JONES RAKES OHIO’S
WATCH CHARM SENATOR
OVER COALS
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WASHINGTON, D. C., April 29.— Mother Jones, whose “boys” are working in every coal mine in Pennsylvania and every mineral camp of Colorado, met Senator Dick, of the notorious Dick military law, as that urbane member of the upper house was standing in the senate lobby of the [Capitol].
All smiles and gladness the senator acknowledged the introduction to the white-haired woman and offered his hand, but “Mother” dropped hers significantly to her side:
I’m fighting you, Senator Dick. It was your work that sent two thousand guns out to Colorado in the last big strike, and shot us up.
“You don’t look as if you had been injured, Madam,” flushed the senator.
“No thanks to your law and the guns that killed others while they missed me,” answered the woman whose appearance and participation in almost every miners’ strike during the last thirty years has earned for her the name of “stormy petrel.”
“But, madam,” argued Senator Dick, “don’t we need soldiers in time of revolution?”
[Flashed Mother Jones:]
In the revolution that drove King George back across the sea, yes. But do we need a law that will do for America what the Irish constabulary law did for Ireland? No, no. Senator Dick, I saw the brutal and bloody work of the militia in Colorado, and the truth is that the guns your law would place in the hands of the mine owners and the mill owners are loaded with bullets for the hearts of the workers.
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday May 19, 1910
Mother Jones News Round-Up for April 1910, Part I:
-Found in the Thick of the Fight on Behalf of Working Class Men and Women
From the Mt. Vernon, Ohio, Democratic Banner of April 5, 1910:
DROP THEIR PICKS AT STROKE OF TWELVE.
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Coal Miners’ Strike Is a Reality.
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200,000 MEN ARE IDLE
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D. H. Sullivan Falls Heir
to Ohio Situation.
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THINKS SETTLEMENT IN SIGHT
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General Belief Is That Suspension
Will Be of Short Duration and That
Country Will Experience No
Serious Result From Shutdown
-Pittsburg Operators Anxious to Sign.
—–
Columbus, O., April 1- Dennis H. Sullivan of Coshocton today assumed his duties as president of the Ohio miners’ union, and made the announcement that nearly every union miner in the state is now idle, work at all mines having been suspended in response to the general order to quit work until new agreements are signed between the operators and officials of the union, in accordance with the 5-cent increase demanded as an ultimatum by the miners present at the Cincinnati conference.
Mr. Sullivan said:
The miners of Ohio stopped work at midnight, but this is in accord with an understanding with the operators. Every miner in the state went out, with the exception of cases in which there has been special permission granted for them to run.
Some mines are run to furnish coal for some specific purpose. For instance, there will be a mine whose entire output is taken by certain locomotives or by a furnace. Here is a contract [picking one from his desk] signed by an eastern Ohio operating company. A furnace is absolutely dependent on these mines, and if they were closed the business would so to some other mine, outside the state, or the furnace would close. We’re not driving business from the state; we’re for Ohio. So in all these cases privilege is given to continue work, pending adjustment of local differences at some later time.
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday May 15, 1910
Milwaukee, Wisconsin – Brewers Stung by True Talks of Mother Jones
From the Duluth Labor World of May 14, 1910:
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CHICAGO, Ill., May 13.—”Mother Jones” told too much truth about the conditions under which the girls employed in the Milwaukee breweries work and the brewery interests think she has gone far enough. So they are calling to their aid detectives in an effort to suppress the printed matter which is being prepared in pamphlet form.
There was such a demand for the articles exposing the conditions in Milwaukee that it was decided to publish the material in pamphlet form.
Acting through a detective agency by the name of Mooney & Boland, the Northwestern Printing Company, which had the contract to print the article, were intimidated into turning over all the pamphlets.
William Vorsatz, who had charge of the distribution of the pamphlets, immediately complained to the postmaster, Daniel Campbell. Apparently the postal officials were more interested in the power of the brewery combine than the weakness of the girl slaves, and charged that “Mother Jones'” article was “obscene.” They especially referred to a paragraph telling about the treatment of the girls by the brutal foremen.
Twenty thousand copies of the pamphlet were printed and the question of sending them out regardless of the postal ruling is being considered.
In substantiation of “Mother Jones'” story of the breweries a delegation from the Women’s Trade Union League of Chicago visited Milwaukee and verified the statements made.
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday May 8, 1920
-Mother Jones News for March 1920, Part II
Found in Denver Conferring with Local Labor Leaders
From The Denver Post of March 27, 1920:
3 MINES EXTEND CONTRACTS
UNTIL AGREEMENT COMES
—–
“Mother” Jones on Way to Denver
to Speak to Laboring Men.
—–
A temporary extension of the contract with the United Mine Workers of America until contracts have been signed in the central competitive district has been announced by officers of the International Fuel company operating the Evans mine at Evans; the Natural, near Louisville; and the National mine in Routt county.
These three mines employ about 300 men. Final action on the renewal of the contract will not be taken until conditions have been agreed upon in the central competitive field.
President John McLennan of District 15, United Mine Workers of America, has returned from Utah. Retiring President John Nigro, who has been in Denver for several days, and Vice President “Mike” Livoda returned to Pueblo Saturday. No decision has been reached yet whether a suspension of work will follow the refusal of many of the operators to renew or extend union contracts April 1.
“Mother” Jones, now en route from San Francisco to the east, will arrive in Denver at 8:20 o’clock Saturday night via the Denver & Rio Grande according to a telegram received by Secretary Edward Anderson of the State Federation of Labor. Arrangements probably will be made for a meeting at which she will be principal speaker. Labor leaders are without information as to the probable length of her visit in Denver.
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CHICAGO, Ill., May 13.—”Mother Jones” told too much truth about the conditions under which the girls employed in the Milwaukee breweries work and the brewery interests think she has gone far enough. So they are calling to their aid detectives in an effort to suppress the printed matter which is being prepared in pamphlet form.
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