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Hellraisers Journal – Monday July 27, 1903
New York, New York – Mother Jones and Her Army Have Their March, Hold Meeting
From the New York Tribune of July 24, 1903
Tag: New York NY
Hellraisers Journal: Socialist Declare That Mother Jones and Her Army Will Parade in New York City With or Without Permit
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Hellraisers Journal – Sunday July 26, 1903
Mother Jones and Her Army Will Parade in New York City, Permit or No
From the New York Tribune of July 23, 1903
-Socialist Declare Mother Jones Will Lead Parade in New York City:
Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Is Guest of Honor at Socialist Picnic at Sulzer’s Westchester Park, States Her Army Will March to Oyster Bay to See the President
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Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday July 22, 1903
Mother Jones Warmly Welcomed at Socialist Picnic at Sulzer’s Westchester Park
From The New York Times of July 20, 1903:
“MOTHER” JONES IN THE CITY.
———-
She Is Warmly Welcomed by the Socialist
Democrats at Westchester Picnic.
“Mother” Jones was the guest of honor yesterday [July 19th] at the annual picnic of the Socialist Democratic Party at Sulzer’s Westchester Park.
‘There were 4,000 persons present, and much disappointment in the afternoon when “Mother” Jones did not appear as she had promised. She arrived in the early evening, however, and was given a rousing welcome. Escorted by a committee to the platform in the pavilion, she had to wait some minutes before she could be heard.
[She said:]
I will be here with my children from the textile works Thursday evening, when I will address you at some length. I am too tired to do so now, and as you see, I am very hoarse.
There is one thing I must tell you, and that is, that I am going to complete the journey to Oyster Bay with my army to see the President. The newspapers say he will not see me. I am going there to find out if he is the President of the capitalists only, or whether be is the President of the workingmen too. If he is the President of the capitalists only, he will be wiped out at the next election.
At the conclusion of her remarks “Mother” Jones was escorted about the park. She was deeply interested in the tests of strength, particularly the work with the sledge hammer, and praised the workingmen for the power they showed in their play.
She was attracted by the neatly dressed children for whom many entertainments had been arranged, such as egg races and skipping the rope for prizes. She said she was glad they could play and had a chance to go to school. Watching the many drinking beer, she remarked that if they would save the drink money they would have more with which to win strikes.
The committee in charge promised “Mother” Jones that they would have Cooper Union engaged for her Thursday evening, or Madison Square Garden, if possible. They asserted that if they could get the big garden it would be overcrowded with the union workingmen and women of New York.
[Photograph and emphasis added.]
Hellraisers Journal: From The Labor World: Mother Jones Leads Babes in Crusade to Expose Manifold Evils of Child Labor
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Hellraisers Journal – Monday July 20, 1903
Mother Jones Leading Babes to New York in Crusade Against Child Labor
From the Duluth Labor World of July 18, 1903:
LITTLE BABES IN A CRUSADE
———-MOTHER JONES IS TO STORM WALL STREET.
———-HEADED FOR NEW YORK CITY.
———-
Wishes to Give the Country a Great Object Lesson
on the Manifold Evils of Child Labor.
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PHILADELPHIA, Pa., July 16.—Many years ago a great crusade was started in Europe for the discovery of Jerusalem and the Savior’s tomb from the Infidels. A hermit rushed through the country calling upon all parents to allow their children to join the Holy crusade which would surely have the help of all the guardian angles in Heaven.
And so a great army of children of rich and poor was gathered together and set out upon a journey, the dangers of which had been sadly misjudged. They died by the way sides by thousands and gradually the great multitude appeared. Jerusalem was still held by the Infidels, while in the homes mothers mourned for their dear little ones who never returned.
“Mother” Jones’ Crusade.
“Mother” Jones believes it is time for another crusade of children. This one, however, is to be directed to storming the hearts of the people by showing them living examples of what child labor does for childhood. So she started for New York one day last week with 400 textile working men, women and children on strike for shorter hours and a wagon load of little girls to show the “sharks of Wall Street,” as she puts it, and the people generally the evils of child labor through these living examples of a child slavery system which seems so firmly fixed on the little ones of Pennsylvania.
On Wednesday morning [Tuesday July 7th] with the fife and drum preceding them, some carrying umbrellas, while others plodded along under the blazing sun, the procession started for New York City. It was a miserable looking lot of babes that strung out over several miles of dusty road.
At Cedar Hill Cemetery the first big defection took place. Nearly 100 footsore and tired men and women sat still when the order was given to resume the march. The girls in the wagon kept singing the entire time. The fife and drum corps played at intervals. Stragglers by twos and threes kept dropping out until Torresdale Park was in sight twelve miles from the starting point. Thus ended the first day’s march.
The fife and drum, especially when “Marching Through Georgia” was being played, cheered the children up a bit, and the arrival of the commissary wagons loaded with canned goods and bread was a welcome sight. “Mother” Jones will be a leader indeed if she succeeds in keeping a quarter of them together by the time she arrives in New York. An immense meeting of workers is planned to be held in Madison Square Garden when the children, reach there.
Plan Great Show.
Part of “Mother” Jones’ plan consists in the use of an assortment of costumes, glass diamonds, megaphones, phonographs and motto-inscribed banners. “Mr. Capital” is to be exhibited dressed in costly raiment. “Mrs. Mill Owner” is to sit beside him, wearing her jewels. Tableaux, charades, plays and dialogues are to be arranged, all bearing on the textile strike. Frequent stops will be made, exhibitions given, and donations asked for.
“Mother” Jones, as commander-in-chief, has full charge of the campaign. After at first opposing it the strike leaders became convinced that it was an excellent plan to stir up the workers and the general public of the United States to lend a hand in the fight for shorter hours. “Mother” Jones has therefore obtained their co-operation, though her power is somewhat restricted.
[Said Mother Jones:]
The sight of little children at work in mills when they ought to be at school or at play, arouses me. I found the conditions in Philadelphia deplorable, and I resolved to do what I could to shorten the hours of toil of the striking textile workers so has to gain more liberty for the children and women. I had a parade of children through, the city—the cradle of liberty—but the citizens were not moved to pity by the object lesson.
No Pity Here, She Says.
The curse of greed so pressed on their hearts that they could not pause to express their pity for future men and women who are being stunted mentally, morally and physically so that they cannot possibly become good citizens. I cannot believe that the public conscience is so callous that it will not respond. I am going out of Philadelphia to see if there are people with human blood in their veins.
When I think of the present and future I fear for my country. The criminal classes keep increasing. Large sums of money are being poured out for almshouses, or refuge, reformatories and schools for defectives, but they are only a drop in the bucket. The disease cannot be cured unless the cause is removed. Keen, unrestrained competition, rivalry for commercial supremacy and lust for wealth tramples on humanity and feels no remorse.
May Visit Roosevelt.
I am going picture capitalism and caricature the money-mad. I am going to show Wall street the flesh and blood from which it squeezes its wealth. I am going to show President Roosevelt the poor little things on which the boasted commercial greatness of our country is built. Not one single Philadelphia minister of Christ’s Gospel has so much as touched on the textile strike in this city. I shall endeavor to arouse sleeping Christians to a sense of their duty toward the poor little ones.
[Photograph and emphasis added.]
Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: “The Paterson Strike Pageant” by Phillips Russell, Part II
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Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday July 2, 1913
“The Paterson Strike Pageant” by Phillips Russell, Part II
From the International Socialist Review of July 1913:
[Part II of II]
The New York Press the next day said:
“The Garden has held many shows and many audiences, from Dowie to Taft to Buffalo Bill, but it is doubtful if there ever was such an assemblage either as an audience or as a show as was gathered under the huge rafters last night. In fact, it was a mixed grouping that at times they converged and actor became auditor and auditor turned suddently into actor. When more than 10,000 sang and shouted within, 5,000 outside clamored for admittance and were willing to pay double the prices to get in.”
The New York Evening World said:
“Fifteen thousand specators applauded with shouts and tears the great Paterson Strike Pageant at Madison Square Garden. The big mill aglow with light in the dark hours of early winter morning, the shrieking whistles, the din of machinery-dying away to give place to the Marseillaise sung by a surging crowd of 1,200 operatives, the fierce battle with the police, the sombre funeral of the victim, the impassioned speech of the agitator, the sending away of the children, the great meeting of desperate hollow-eyed strikers-these scenes unrolled with a poignant realism that no man who saw them will ever forget.”
No spectacle enacted in New York has ever made such an impression. Not the most sanguine member of the committee which made the preparations for the pageant believed that its success would be quite so overwhelming. It is still the talk of New York, most cynical and hardened of cities, and will remain so for many days.
There were times when the committee were assailed with oppressive doubts. When one sat down and thought it over in cold blood, the idea of arranging for and carrying through such a thing in two weeks’ time seemed almost grotesque. Outside of the mechanical difficulties involved, the multitudinous details to be attended to, the advance outlay of money that would be necessary seemed to present an insuperable obstacle. There was the single item of $1,000 to be put down for the rental of one night, the $750 needed for scenery, the huge sum for advertising, all to be provided.
After plunging in with enthusiasm for the first few days, a bad reaction seized the promoters. They called a meeting in which the most gloomy forebodings were indulged in. There were disturbing reports of the small advance sale of tickets and there were serious proposals to give the whole thing up.
It was the workers themselves who stepped into the breach. Delegates from the New York silk strikers, whose cause has almost been lost sight of in the more spectacular struggle of Paterson, arose indignantly.
“What?” they cried. “Give this thing up after our people have set their hearts upon it? Never! Is it money you need? Leave it to us-we’ll raise that! We are poor. We are on strike. But a lot of us still have a few dollars left in the savings bank that we’ve been putting by through many years. We’ll get it out and lump it together. We will go to our business men and say: ‘Here, we’ve been trading with you a long time. We have helped to make your profits. Now you help us or we won’t trade with you any more.’ Never mind. You leave it to us-we will raise the money.”
And they did. Other generous people, more richly upholstered with ready cash, also came forward with contributions and in four days there was ample money with which to cover all deposits.
And it was found that the result was worth all the toil and trouble involved. The lives of most of us are sordid and grey. So tightly are we tied to the petty round of toil to which our galley-masters bind us, that most of us probably are born, live and die without experiencing one deep-springing, surging, devastating emotion. We are either afraid to feel or we have lost the capacity.
The Paterson pageant will be remembered for the sweeping emotions it shot through the atmosphere if for no other reason. Waves of almost painful emotion swept over that great audience as the summer wind converts a placid field of wheat into billowing waves. It was all real, living, and vital to them. There were veterans of many an industrial battle in that audience, though the cheeks of many still held the pink of youth.
Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: “The Paterson Strike Pageant” by Phillips Russell, Part I
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Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday July 1, 1913
“The Paterson Strike Pageant” by Phillips Russell, Part I
From the International Socialist Review of July 1913:
[Part I of II]
JUNE 7, 1913, was a red letter day in New York. Literally, too. For when dusk fell on Madison Square, high up on the tower of Madison Square Garden, shone the giant letters “I. W. W.,” glowing red in the sky and sending scarlet beams through the smoke that drifts incessantly across the face of Manhattan Island.
It was the first time that those significant letters have ever been given so conspicuous a place. Their mission was to announce something new under the sun, a labor play in which laborers themselves were the actors, managers and sole proprietors, portraying by word and movement their own struggle for a better world.
Imagine a great auditorium, the largest in New York, filled with one of the hughest audiences that ever gathered in the metropolis, gazing on the largest amateur production ever staged, with the biggest cast-1,029 members-that ever took part in a play, enacting a life-drama calculated to raise to the highest pitch the most powerful human emotions-and one gets a faint idea of the event in Madison Square Garden on the evening of June 7.
In order to give the reader a mental picture of what happened that night on the stage-which alone cost $600 to build -it might be well to outline the six episodes composing the pageant as given in the official program, which itself made a good propaganda pamphlet of 32 pages with a lithographed cover:
Scene: Paterson, N.J. Time: A. D. 1913.
The Pageant represents a battle between the working class and the capitalist class conducted by the Industrial Workers of the World (I. W. W.), making use of the general strike as the chief weapon. It is a conflict between two social forces-the force of labor and the force of capital.
While the workers are clubbed and shot by detectives and policemen, the mills remain dead. While the workers are sent to jail by hundreds, the mills remain dead. While organizers are persecuted, the strike continues, and still the mills are dead. While the pulpit thunders denunciation and the press screams lies, the mills remain dead. No violence can make the mills alive-no legal process can resurrect them from the dead. Bayonets and clubs, injunctions and court orders are equally futile.
Only the return of the workers to the mills can give the dead things life. The mills remain dead throughout the enactment of the following episodes.
Hellraisers Journal: Chairman Frederick Boyd Reports: Pageant Yields Deficit of $1,996 Rather Than Profit of $6,000
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Hellraisers Journal – Saturday June 28, 1913
New York, New York – Frederick Boyd Issues Financial Report on Paterson Pageant
From The New York Times of June 25, 1913:
DEFICIT OF $1,996 FROM STRIKE SHOW
———-
Instead of Making Rumored $6,000 Profit,
Paterson I.W.W. Lost by Pageant at Garden.
———-MANY LOANS STILL UNPAID
———-
But All Who Cannot Afford Loss Got Their Money
-Good Seats Sold for Almost Nothing.
———-
Despite the statements, made after the Paterson strike pageant in Madison Square Garden, that it would net $6,000 to the strike fund, the Executive Committee of the strike announced yesterday that when all expenses were paid there would be a deficit of $1,996.45.
The greater part of this is due to sympathizers who advanced money to help the show, but the committee says that the loans still unpaid were furnished by people in comfortable circumstances who could afford the loss, while the loans from actual strikers had been paid back already.
Frederick Sumner Boyd, Chairman of the Executive Committee, had a conference yesterday with Miss Jessie Ashley, a lawyer, of 27 Cedar Street, who was Treasurer of the Entertainment Committee, and others, and a statement of the receipts and expenditures was prepared to show the Paterson strikers where all the money went to. The Socialist Party has nothing to do with the Industrial Workers of the World, but individual Socialists are members of the I. W. W., and Miss Ashley is one of these.
In discussing yesterday’s criticisms of the managers of the pageant and the questions which had been asked as to what had become of the rumored $6,000 profit, she said it was outrageous to hint that there had been dishonesty on the part of the strike leaders, unless figures could be produced to show that there had been irregularities.
Frederick Sumner Boyd, after the conference in Miss Ashley office, said for the committee:
“Miss Ashley was the first treasurer of the pageant, but becoming tied up with other duties, Mrs. Florence Wise of the Women’s Trades Union League took her place. At first it looked as if the pageant would be a source of profit, when the expenses began to pile up, and we were uncertain of a paying audience, we began to be afraid of a breakdown. At one time we had practically decided to abandon the pageant, but as we had made contracts and had incurred expenses we should have to meet in any case, we decided to pull the entertainment through.
“We had to raise $3,000 for expenses, so we called a meeting of the entire committee and of five delegates of the New York silk strikers. We told them the entertainment could not be brought off-but the delegates insisted that it must be. It was decided to raise the $3,000, and within twenty-four hours John Steiger brought in $1,600 and Miss Mabel Dodge collected $600. About $1,000 more was raised from various sources. Then we went ahead.”
Boyd then went on to explain the deficit, he said that neither Haywood, Reed, Miss Dodge, or others associated with them directly had anything to do with handling the money, except to sell a few tickets.….
[Newsclip and emphasis added.]
Hellraisers Journal: From The New York Call: Mother Jones Speaks to Socialists at Carnegie Hall, “Cowards! Moral Cowards!”
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Hellraisers Journal – Thursday May 29, 1913
New York, New York – Mother Jones Speaks to Socialists at Carnegie Hall
From The New York Call of May 27, 1913:
From The New York Call of May 28, 1913:
This was the scene, as described by the New York Call, when Mother Jones was introduced by Max Eastman last night at Carnegie Hall:
Scarcely had her name left his lips then the audience burst into shouting, stamping, and handclapping. Several women surged down the aisle toward the stage and threw kisses to the aged agitator and flowers at her feet.
Mother Jones spoke at length about the West Virginia strike, the terror inflicted on the miners by the gun thugs, and the mass round-up of strikers by the military. She referred to West Virginia as “The Little Russia in America.” She sounded this warning:
West Virginia is on trial before the bar of the nation. The military arrests and the court martial to which I and others were forced to undergo in West Virginia was the first move ever made by the ruling class to have the working class tried by the military and not civil courts. It is up to the American workers to make sure that it is the last.
The comfortable New York Socialist were not spared the ire of Mother Jones:
What galled me most about my confinement at the military prison at Pratt, West Virginia, was the knowledge that a bunch of corporation lickspittles had the right to confine me. But I must be frank and tell you that the second thing that galled me was the silence of many here tonight who should have shouted out against the injustice. I would still be in jail if Senator Kern had not introduced his resolution… No thanks, then, to you that I am here today. Cowards! Moral cowards! If you had only risen to your feet like men and said, “We don’t allow military despotism in America! Stop it!” A lot of moral cowards you are. Not a word of protest did we get out of you, but instead you sat idly by and let these things be.
The New York Call continued:
After Mother had spoken a collection was taken up and $267.80 contributed. It was intended for the striking miners. Mother Jones announced the miners would take care of the miners, and said the collection could go to the Paterson silk strikers.
[Emphasis added.]
Hellraisers Journal: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn States: New Yorkers Will Care for the Children of the Paterson Silk Strikers
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Hellraisers Journal – Thursday May 15, 1913
New York, New York – Detachment of Paterson Children Arrive in City
From the Paterson Evening News of May 13, 1913:
WILL CARE FOR MORE CHILDREN
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“New Yorkers are anxious to take care of your children until the strike is over, and help you win your battle,” said Miss Elizabeth Gurley Flynn in a recent address at Helvetia hall. This seems to be true if the following dispatch from New York is to be believed:
New York, May 13 [Tuesday].-Seven or eight hundred men and women pushed and shoved and almost came to blows on Saturday [May 10] for the possession of sixty-five frightened little boys and girls. They were the third detachment of children of the striking Paterson silk weavers sent here to be farmed out to board among strike sympathizer, and the men and women who almost mobbed them were fighting for one of them to care for.
Industrial Workers of the World followers, their friends and few curious people began to gather early yesterday afternoon at the Labor Temple. They came because the Paterson strike committee had sent out 250 postcards asking volunteers to board and lodge 150 children, who would be allotted to their temporary guardians at five o’clock. Twice before in the last ten days this appeal had been sent out, and already 175 children have found homes in New York. A special committee, of which F. Sumner Boyd is chairman, and Mrs. Anna M. Sloan director, has had charge of the distribution.
When children arrived by auto truck from Paterson at 5.30 o’clock there were only sixty-five of them. They ranged in age from four to fourteen years, and when Miss Jessie Ashley and Miss Ethel Byrne, Paterson nurse, the others who had brought here had seated them in rows at Labor Temple hall and announced that only sixty-five, instead of 150, would be assigned, trouble began…
[Mr. Boyd declared:]
We shall probably bring 100 or more over the middle of the week, and we already have more than twice as many applications for the children as we have children to be cared for. We will bring them all, though.
Like the 175 children that have already been brought here, those who came yesterday were all found on examination by physicians in Paterson to be below normal from malnutrition.
[Photographs and emphasis added.]
Hellraisers Journal: From The Progressive Woman: White Slave Number, Enslaving and Trafficking Women and Girls for Profit
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Hellraisers Journal – Monday April 14, 1913
The White Slave Traffic for Sex Commerce in Free America
From The Progressive Woman of April 1913:
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THE WHITE SLAVE TRAFFIC
by Agnes H. DowningWHILE all can see that women are sold for sex commerce, until very recently it was believed that the women were themselves the sellers. It was thought that either for love of luxury, or discouragement after seduction, or through their hunger needs women have consented to sell themselves promiscuously. But in late years and through accumulated evidence, it has been proved that the great business of supplying inmates for evil institutions has been and is carried on by persons who make a business of securing the girls for this traffic…..
In 1907 the United States government, through a special committee of the Immigration Commission, made an investigation of the importation and harboring of women for immoral purposes. The report says (Senate document 196, pages 8 and 9):
“…..The procurer may put his woman into a disorderly house, sharing the profits with the madam. He may sell her outright; he may act as an agent for another man; he may keep her, making arrangements for her hunting men. She must walk the streets and secure her patrons, to be exploited, not for her own sake, but for that of her owner…..”
They secure such power over the girls, first, because the girls are young and ignorant of their legal rights, and again because a girl is always suspicioned for being led into such a place. Though she be perfectly innocent, people are not ready to believe her. Lastly, when the punishment is beating or death, girls and men, too, can be forced into almost anything…..
It is just as much the duty of Socialists here and now to combat the white slave traffic as it is to strive for higher wages, rights of asylum, universal peace, or any of the other measures for which we all contend. It is in this broadness of spirit that our best good is to be found.
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WHO ARE WHITE SLAVES?
by Jessie AshleyTODAY the whole country talks and writes unceasingly of white slavery. As a descriptive title it is striking, and this fact helps to give it publicity; it attracts attention and sticks in the mind. But it is not wholly accurate. Slaves there are, but they are not always white; many black women and little yellow ones are also slaves in a world that should be free.
Slaves! What is a slave? A human being who has no freedom of choice, one who must live according to the will of another. Technically, when we speak of white slaves, we mean unwilling prostitutes. It is this phase of the matter that is arousing the just rage of a slowly awakening world. No rage can be too great for the crime, it must indeed become so great that it will sweep the horror from the face of the earth…..
Slaves, every woman of them today, whether prostitutes held unwillingly, or prostitutes gone willingly “astray,” whether submissive wife or rebellious virgin. Slaves every one, because there is no freedom of choice, but only a blind, cruel, stupid master, the social system, that without reason and without sympathy enslaves its womanhood.
But the cure is on its way. Women are becoming thinkers and are testing for themselves the chains that bind them. They are learning how to break them. They are at last beginning to realize that they are slaves, and that this is not a necessary condition; just as the working class is beginning to see that wage slavery is not necessary.
So on with the fight against white slavery and black, on with the working class rebellion against wage slavery, but let women especially keep up the rebellion, demanding fearlessly and incessantly sex freedom and economic freedom.
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