Tag: New York NY

Hellraisers Journal: From The Progressive Woman: White Slave Number, Enslaving and Trafficking Women and Girls for Profit

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Joe Hill, White Slave, Girls in this way, LRSB 1913—————

Hellraisers Journal – Monday April 14, 1913
The White Slave Traffic for Sex Commerce in Free America

From The Progressive Woman of April 1913:

Progressive Woman Cv White Slave Number, Prg Wmn Apr 1913

—————

THE WHITE SLAVE TRAFFIC
by Agnes H. Downing

WHILE 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.

—————

WHO ARE WHITE SLAVES?
by Jessie Ashley

TODAY 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.

—————

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From The Progressive Woman: White Slave Number, Enslaving and Trafficking Women and Girls for Profit” →

Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: “The New York Garment Workers” by Mary E. Marcy, Part II

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Rose Schneiderman Quote, Stand Together to Resist Mar 20, NY Independent p938, Apr 1905—————

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday February 4, 1913
New York, New York – The Garment Strike by Mary Marcy, Photos by Paul Thompson

From the International Socialist Review of February 1913:

THE NEW YORK GARMENT WORKERS
By MARY E. MARCY

Photographs by Paul Thompson, New York.

[Part II of III]

NY Garment Workers, White Goods Strikers, ISR p585, Feb 1913

The thugs employed by the shop bosses have proved very energetic and reliable. They have worked early and late beating up strikers whenever possible, starting trouble and blaming it on the workers, while the police stood by (or took a hand) to see that nobody attacked or injured them.

During the first week in January the union officials conferred with the employers relative to a settlement of the strike, but the New York Call reports that all negotiations were broken off when the employers insisted upon a return of the strikers to the shops pending an investigation of the conditions in the trade by a special commission to be appointed for that purpose. The union officials declared that under no circumstances would “they order the men to return to work” pending an investigation or arbitration of their demands.

As the pickets began to suffer at the hands of the company guards, it was decided to take a lesson from the strikers at Lawrence, Mass., and chain picketing was employed for the first time in New York City.

Ten thousand pickets were asked to report each day, starting to work on the “Chain Picket Line” at 5 :00 o’clock in the morning, to pass constantly in a steady stream of pedestrians before the strikebound shops.

On the day of the inauguration of the Chain Picket plan, the unions held various meetings which were well attended by the strikers. Hugh Frayne urged a general strike in every branch of the needle and garment industries, promising the support of the A. F. of L. while Abe Cahan closed one meeting begging the strikers to be true to the American Federation of Labor. He urged them to carry an A. F. of L. card in one pocket and a Socialist party card in the other (that is to work for class organization on one side and craft division on the other.)

This is very different from the calls of the Industrialists, all of whom insist upon a CLASS UNION card on the industrial field and a Socialist party card to represent their class interests upon the political field.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: “The New York Garment Workers” by Mary E. Marcy, Part II” →

Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: “The New York Garment Workers” by Mary E. Marcy, Part I

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Rose Schneiderman Quote, Stand Together to Resist Mar 20, NY Independent p938, Apr 1905—————

Hellraisers Journal – Monday February 3, 1913
New York, New York – The Garment Strike by Mary Marcy, Photos by Paul Thompson

From the International Socialist Review of February 1913:

HdLn NY Garment Workers by M Marcy, CRTN Walker Solidarity Hand, ISR p583, Feb 1913

[Part I of III]

A WALKOUT which may yet involve every garment worker in the nation, was started in New York City, December 30th, when scores of thousands of men and women employed in the garment industries responded to the call issued by the United Garment Workers of America and deserted the shops and benches where they had toiled for years.

The response to the strike call was so great that the union officials declared the union was a great deal stronger than they had believed. One thousand five hundred volunteer red scouts, who were picked to carry the official strike declaration, were on the job at 4:00 o’clock in the morning ready to start out with bundles of strike orders to be distributed in all sections of the Lower East Side. Before night over 100,000 men, women and children had taken their working paraphernalia home to begin the good fight.

The garment workers are striking for:

The abolition of the subcontracting system.
The abolition of foot power.
That no work be given out to be done in tenement houses.
Overtime to be paid for at the rate of time and one half, double time for holidays.
A forty-eight hour work week.
A general wage increase of 20 per cent for all the workers in the garment industry.

The following scale of wages:
Operators-First class, sewing around coats, sewing in sleeves, and pocket makers, $25 per week; second class, lining makers, closers and coat stitchers, $22; third class, sleeve makers and all other machine workers, $16.
Tailors-First class, shapers, underbasters and fitters, $24; second class, edge basters, canvas basters, collar makers, lining basters and bushelers, $21; third class, armhole basters, sleeve makers, and all other tailoring, $17.
Pressers-Bushel pressers, $24; regular pressers, second class, $24; underpressers and edge pressers, $18.
Women and Child Workers-Button sewers and bushel hands, $12; hand buttonhole makers, first class, 3½ cents; second class, sack coats, 2½ cents; feller hands, not less than $10 a week.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: “The New York Garment Workers” by Mary E. Marcy, Part I” →

Hellraisers Journal: Arrest of Carlo Tresca Leads to Discovery of Browning Love Poems Dedicated to Him by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn

Janet RayeElizabeth Gurley Flynn
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Quote EGF, Work for Justice Despite Hardships, Tacoma Tx p7, Dec 29, 1909—————-

Hellraisers Journal – Friday January 31, 1913
New York, New York – Love Poems Found Dedicated to Tresca by Miss Flynn 

From the Spokane Daily Chronicle of January 30, 1913:

EGF Romance Poetry for Tresca, Spk Dly Chc p1, Jan 30, 1913

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Arrest of Carlo Tresca Leads to Discovery of Browning Love Poems Dedicated to Him by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn” →

Hellraisers Journal: New York City Waiters’ Strike Collapses; I. W. W. Organizers Urge Strikers to “Live to Fight Another Day”

Janet RayeElizabeth Gurley Flynn
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Quote EGF, My Aim in Life, Spk Rv p7, July 8, 1909—————

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday January 29, 1913
New York, New York – Waiters’ Strike Collapses Under Policemen’s Clubs

From the Honesdale Citizen (Pennsylvania) of January 28, 1913:

WAITERS’ STRIKE COLLAPSES.
———-
Lack of Public Sympathy and Police Clubs
Causes of Failure.

EGF, NYC Waiters Strike, York Daily PA p1, Jan 28, 1913

New York, Jan. 27.-The general strike of the hotel workers, which was promoted and nursed by the agitators of the big Bill Haywood organization, the Industrial Workers of the World, has collapsed. The strike leaders admitted that the fighting spirit had oozed out of their followers and that within twenty-four hours waiters and cooks and others would be scrambling for their old jobs.

The organizers sent by the Industrial Workers of the World to show the hotel workers how to fight according to the tactics of Haywood and Ettor were the first to admit defeat. Patrick Quinlan, the general organizer, and Miss Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, the principal speechmaker, were hard at work trying to convince the leaders of the International Hotel Workers’ union that he who fights and runs away can live to fight another day.

Less astute perhaps than the professionals of the Industrial Workers of the World, the leaders of the Hotel Workers’ union were struggling at the executive committee meeting to prolong the strike, but they were told frankly by the Industrial Workers of the World strategists that the battle was lost and that terms had better be made as quickly as possible. There were a number of causes for the failure of the strike. Among them were an absence of public sympathy, the lukewarm attitude of 75 per cent of the union waiters satisfied with their pay and the discovery of the strikers that the police were not afraid to use their clubs.

After three days of window smashing, of assaults on nonunion waiters and of noisy demonstrations there was less work last night for the police and the private guards by whom most of the hotels and restaurants were heavily guarded.

[Newsclip added from York Daily (Pennsylvania) of January 28, 1913.]

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: New York City Waiters’ Strike Collapses; I. W. W. Organizers Urge Strikers to “Live to Fight Another Day”” →

Hellraisers Journal: From The Coming Nation: Theresa Malkiel on the New York Garment Workers Strike, Part III

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote T Malkiel, Sisters Arise, Sc Woman p10, July 1908—————

Hellraisers Journal – Monday January 27, 1913
New York, New York – Theresa Malkiel on Suffering of Garment Workers

From The Coming Nation of January 25, 1913:

Striking for the Right to Live

-by Theresa Malkiel

[Part II of III]

Worker Carrying Garments to Finish, Cmg Ntn p7, Jan 25, 1913

The clothing workers have suffered and starved, and, it must be admitted, tried to improve their condition by frequent strikes and attempts at organization. But their organizations, even as their strikes bore local character. One part of the trade, or one branch, or subdivision would go out on the warpath, but its struggle was doomed from the start, for the rest of the industry continued its work as if nothing had happened.

The German hated the Jew, the Jew the Italian, who is trying to wrench the trade from him, the Italian despised the Russian, the Russian the American, the cutter looked down upon the operator, the operator exploited the finisher, the finisher the helper, and while this was going on the employers exploited them all to their heart’s content.

The United Garment Workers of America, though considered the mother body of the clothing trade occupied themselves chiefly with one branch the overall-making, which is mostly in the hands of American women, and paid but little attention to the woes and sorrows of the tailors, perhaps, because the latter was considered beyond redemption.

Thus have men, women and children slaved for over seventy-five years. Thus have thousands upon thousands gone to their early graves, victims of consumption, heart disease, malnutrition, insanity. The man in charge of the claim department of the Workingman’s Circle, most of whose members are garment workers, told the writer that nine-tenths of their members died before they reached the age of forty.

And with the tailors the general public suffered. Unsanitary work-rooms, sweat-shop labor means infection of the garments, and eventually of the public who wear them. Our coats and suits were and still are made in places where smallpox, scarlet fever, diphtheria, measles, consumption and numerous other contagious diseases make great inroads. Our garments are made by workers themselves afflicted with disease, as a matter of fact, the workers in the sweat-shops and tenements not only work on the garments we wear, but often use them to sleep on or to cover themselves with.

Thus have ninety-two million people all over the country been subject to disease and contagion carried to them in their garments from Baltimore, Philadelphia, Chicago, Rochester and New York. For these cities produce 70 per cent of the entire output of man’s and children’s clothing, while New York alone produces one-third of the entire output.

New York was always the largest center in the clothing industry. The city has the natural advantages for production of all grades of clothing. Here, too, a large body of tailors land from Europe, and for the most part remain. The tailors form the nucleus for the better grades of work, while the hundreds of thousands of immigrants landing here yearly enable the employers to obtain cheap labor for the lower grade of garments.

The 125,000 striking garment workers think and say that their strike should be the concern of the entire nation. That their demand for the abolition of the sweat-shop and the subcontracting system should meet the endorsement of every thinking man and woman.

As a matter of fact, even the capitalist press, always ready to slur labor and denounce strikes has exhibited a more human attitude in this strike. It has gone even so far as to express its approval of the abolition of the sweatshop, this perhaps, not because it loves the garment workers so much, but that it wants to protect the general public more.

Then again the sudden display of solidarity has almost taken our newspaper men off their feet. And how wonderful this display is at present can be fully appreciated by an eye witness only. From the highest to the lowest, the few Americans as well as the great body of foreigners, the bulk of Jewish men even as the Italian women stand out for the recognition of their union, for the joint settlement with all branches

“When did the tailor learn this class solidarity? How did he come by it?” ask our upholders of the present regime. They know not, or don’t care to know that the world moved a bit of late, that the progress of evolution, the age of industrialism has advanced the cause of the working class. That the workers are not only firmly-planted on the economic field, but that they have a great political party, the Socialist party, that they have a great press in almost all languages represented in the tailoring industry, the Socialist press.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From The Coming Nation: Theresa Malkiel on the New York Garment Workers Strike, Part III” →

Hellraisers Journal: From The Coming Nation: Theresa Malkiel on the New York Garment Workers Strike, Part II

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote T Malkiel, Sisters Arise, Sc Woman p10, July 1908—————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday January 26, 1913
New York, New York – Theresa Malkiel Observes Ten Thousand Pickets

From The Coming Nation of January 25, 1913:

Striking for the Right to Live

-by Theresa Malkiel

[Part II of III]

NY Loft Shop Garment Workers, Cmg Ntn p7, Jan 25, 1913

Ten Thousand Pickets

A tumult, a commotion, a shout and I found myself eagerly peering out of the window; many heads pressed close about and in back of me. They were coming from the field work, the pickets I mean. Not two, not ten, not a hundred, but 10,000 strong, an army of labor, a city in itself.

My God! how powerful they looked. Every stone in the street pavements, every brick of the dark grim tenements seemed to have spoken to me of it. I was moved to tears of joy. I felt like a long-lost traveler who had at last found the right road. Now I knew it. There is where the true power, the road to freedom, was to be found in the combination and solidarity of labor.

These ten thousand tailor pickets were a power that even New York could not combat. It would take the entire police force to fight them man to man, or rather man to woman, for the women are really the greater fighters, the most determined pickets of the two.

Out of the picket line came an Italian woman, a mother of six children. She was beaten up by the police while watching her shop with a few others. The brutal thugs in police uniform knocked her about, bruised her face, disheveled her hair, tore her clothes off her back and Lord knows what else they might have done to her had she not been rescued by the army of 10,000.

Thus is the working class mother treated by our capitalist government, for no other crime than the earnest desire to earn an honest living for her children.

She took it calmly, stoically, as they all take it, the true Roman matrons that they are. “It’s all for my childs,” she said. “I fight them again. I no care.”

And still the picket line marched onward like a threatening cloud from above. They feared nothing, not even the elements. Occasionally one would fall out of their midst for the same reasons as the Italian woman came out of the picket line, but the men, like the women, took the medicine dealt out to them by the police and thugs like good fellows.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From The Coming Nation: Theresa Malkiel on the New York Garment Workers Strike, Part II” →

Hellraisers Journal: From The Coming Nation: Theresa Malkiel on the New York Garment Workers Strike, Part I

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote T Malkiel, Sisters Arise, Sc Woman p10, July 1908—————

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday January 25, 1913
New York, New York – Theresa Malkiel on the Scene with Striking Garment Workers

From The Coming Nation of January 25, 1913:

Striking for the Right to Live

-by Theresa Malkiel

[Part I of III]

New York Garment Worker, Cmg Ntn p2, Jan 25, 1913

GRANDMOTHER! what are you doing here?” I asked of an old, old Italian woman who came up panting to the fourth floor of Clinton Hall. She turned around, looked me over with her black, penetrating eyes, which in spite of her age had not lost their luster and said:

“Me striker. Who you are?” I showed her my speaker’s card issued by the joint committee of the Socialist party and the United Hebrew Trades and she nodded her head in approval. I told her I was anxious to hear the story of the strike from the lips of the workers themselves.

“Me no speak much English,” she replied, “but me tella you just what me feel.” 

She pulled up her gray, worn shawl which had slid down from her bent shoulders, smoothed her snow-white hair and slowly in broken English told me her tale of woe and suffering.

As she talked on I observed her closely and wondered what had kept up the fire and activity in that aged body, perhaps her very sorrow and unbelievable struggle for existence, for the revelations made by these aged lips sent a chill through me, filled my heart with horror. I knew that her case was not singular, that her condition was characteristic of the condition of all of her sisters in the trade and they constitute 60 per cent of the entire number of 15,000 women workers in men’s and children’s clothing industry.

She told me of twenty long years spent in the clothing workshops where the air is constantly surcharged with the foulest odors and laden with disease germs, she complained of the lack of sunlight of which she had so much in her own land. Here she had to spend her days working by artificial light. She complained of the long hours when work was plentiful, of the dread of slack time, of the small wages at best. 

A bread winner for her own children in her younger days, when she first came to this country, she was now supporting two grand-children whose mother fell a victim to the ravages of consumption. Consumption invaded the old Italian woman’s family, as it had invaded the families of most of the clothing workers, carrying them off in the prime of life. The old woman was exceptionally strong, and she and the two small children she was supporting were the only survivors of the whole family.

These children, who are the apple of her eye, she keeps in a two-room flat of a rear eight-story tenement house located on East Houston street, the district where most of the clothing workers lived in order to be near their workshops, and where the population is recorded to be 1,108 to every acre. She pays $8 a month for rent and keeps two boarders to help pay it.

Strike for Love of Grandchildren

This woman who lacks only five years to the allotted three score and ten must finish 20 pair of pants, that is, sew on the lining, serge the seams, finish up the legs, sew on buttons and tack the buttonholes in order to make a dollar a day; $6 a week is the highest she ever makes in season. The season in the clothing industry lasts from March to June and from September to December. The old woman is no exception, to the rule, $6 per week, in fact, is above the average, many make less and very few more. They have no regular hours, but work as long as there is work, sometimes twelve, and fourteen hours a day.

It was not herself that the old Italian woman considered so much, as her poor orphan grand-children who had to take up the trade where she would leave it off.

“Why me strike you ask?” all the venom of the years of sorrow and wretchedness, all the bitter memory of her sacrificed children, cried out in her voice of defiance. 

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From The Coming Nation: Theresa Malkiel on the New York Garment Workers Strike, Part I” →

Hellraisers Journal: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn Leads Big Strike of Restaurant Waiters in New York City, Describes Vile Conditions

Janet RayeElizabeth Gurley Flynn
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Quote EGF, Heaven n Hell, ISR p617, Jan 1910—————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday January 19, 1913
New York, New York – Elizabeth Gurley Flynn Leads Waiters’ Strike

From The Rock Island Argus of January 18, 1913:

New York.-Elizabeth Gurley Flynn is just a woman, but she has demonstrated her ability to lead a big strike in New York City. When the hotel and restaurant waiters decided that they wanted more pay, they asked Miss Flynn to help them. She played a prominent and successful part in the Lawrence, Mass., textile strike a year ago.

She came to New York City about the time the strike started and has been on the job ever since. She’s a good organizer and a fiery speaker. She says the best way to hit the hotel-keepers is to prove that the food they serve is unclean. Addressing a big crowd of strikers the other night she said:

I want you all to come and tell about the adulteration of food. I want you to tell how dishes which are refused by one guest because of their inferiority are sent back again to another guest; and how sauces are poured upon bad food to make it taste like good food. I want you to make affidavit to it, so we may give our information to the board of health and to the newspapers.

If the guest knew half much as you do about the food they eat and the places it comes from, they wouldn’t dare go into some of our best known hotels and restaurants.

Miss Flynn declared that of course the board of health wouldn’t do anything in the matter. All public officials, naturally, had their palms crossed with filthy capitalistic lucre when they went on “inspection.”

[She resumed:]

We want Mr. Capitalist, when he  sits down to his dainty dinner, to know that its daintiness rose out of a vile spot like a lily out of a mud pool. We want to let the evil smell of your waiters’ quarters spread throughout New York.

He doesn’t care where you work, of course. But if you can impress him with the fact that you work in a vile place, and that his food comes from a vile place, you may be helped. For you will hit him square in the stomach, and that’s where all the senses of the American capitalist are located.

Miss Flynn has been trying to induce the waiters to adopt an anti-tipping resolution. In this she has been unsuccessful.

[Emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for November 1902, Part I: Found Speaking in New York City, Standing with Strikers in West Virginia

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones to Wayland fr WV Wind Blows Cold, AtR p4, Nov 1, 1902—————

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday December 18, 1902
Mother Jones News Round-Up for November 1902, Part I
Found Speaking in New York City and Standing with Striking Miners of West Virginia

From The Comrade of November 1902:

Mother Jones at Cooper Un, Ryan Walker, Comrade p28, Nov 1902
Mother Jones at Cooper Union, New York City, October 18, 1902
by Ryan Walker

———-

Sieverman n Mother Jones, Comrade p28, Nov 1902Frank Sieverman and Mother Jones

From The Brooklyn Daily Eagle of November 1, 1902:

MOTHER JONES’S LECTURE.
———-
Discussed Social and Political Topics
at the Criterion Theater.
———-

“Mother” Jones lectured before a good sized audience last evening in the Criterion Theater on social and political topics. The audience was evidently in sympathy wiih her views, for she was frequently interrupted with applause and her introduction was the signal for an ovation that must have been flattering to the venerable organizer.

“Mother” Jones is a well preserved woman of perhaps 60 years, with bright blue eyes and clear complexion, and she speaks with great force and earnestness.

Dr. Charles Furman presided at the meeting and introduced “Mother” Jones. Some enthusiastic socialist leaped up on his seat and called for three cheers for the speaker and they were given with a will.

“Mother” Jones began her address by saying the movement of the present day was along lines of progression laid down by the sages years ago, and everywhere along the line of battle the cry was forward. “To move forward is the object of socialism, and to help you in this movement is why I am here to-night.”

In referring to the recent coal miners’ strike in Pennsylvania “Mother” Jones said John Mitchell was one of God’s own noblemen and she flayed the operators in no uncertain tone. Referring to her arrest and incarceration in West Virginia, “Mother” Jones said she had been blamed by a great many people because she shook hands with the judge who sentenced her to jail. “Why shouldn’t I do so?” she cried. “The judge was not to blame. He was a victim of environment and had to perform his sworn duty to carry out the laws as he found them.” Continuing, the speaker said neither of the old parties could be trusted because both were capitalistic.

In many respects her address was disappointing. She presented no new arguments and her discourse did not differ mainly from the usual pronouncements of socialists-that is, condemnation of capital. J. P. Morgan came in for a good share of the speaker’s attention and many of her witty sallies in reference to him evoked hearty applause.

From the Appeal to Reason of November 1, 1902:

All newspaper reports to the contrary notwithstanding, the miners’ strike in West Virginia is by no means over, and a hard fight is being made in a number of districts where the operators refuse to make any concessions. “Mother” Jones writes from Montgomery, W. Va, that the utmost suffering prevails there, in consequence of the harsh measures taken by the “Christian men to whom God in His infinite wisdom has given the control of the property interests of this country.” She says: “We have fifteen hundred families of coal miners thrown out of their homes by the capitalist cannibals, and now camping on the highway. We should not talk so much about evictions in Ireland. Free America eclipses Ireland.”

—————

From Mother Jones.
Montgomery, West Va., Oct 5, 1902.

Dear Wayland: Here I am in the midst of industrial warfare with all its horrors. The wind blows cold this morning, but these cruel coal barons do not feel the winter blast; their babes, nay even their poodles dogs, are warm and have a comfortable breakfast, while these slaves of the caves, who in the past have moved the commerce of the world, are out on the highways without clothes or shelter. Nearly 3,000 families have been thrown out of the corporation shacks to face the cold blasts of winter weather. Children look into your face and their looks ask, is this what we are here for?

Is this the doctrine Jesus taught? Is this what he agonized for that frightful night in the Garden of Gethsemane 2.000 years ago? When you look at this picture of suffering, and then look into the homes of the Barons, with their joy and pleasures that these helpless people have given, then I ask Bishop Potter how he can howl “all for Jesus” on Sunday and on Monday morning drink wine at $35.00 a bottle, and sing all for Baer and Morgan.

In Pennsylvania its “shoot to kill,” in Virginia, it’s injunction them to death: Everywhere you go, you step on an injunction. Step on the Monstrous injunction. There yells a corporation lap dog, if you step on the R. R. T. the R. R. Detective yells, “Get off here, on injunction company property.” If you go into the river some one yells out “I own half that River.” Well, said I, for God’s sake give me a chance to make a deal with Peter, perhaps he might lend a rope down and swing me in the air. They will have an injunction on that soon. If you go on the public highways, to say “all for Jesus,” with a crowd of strikers, it is an unlawful assemblage-no one can do that but Potter and Morgan-you must be a sky pilot, an looking for Morgan.

MOTHER JONES.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for November 1902, Part I: Found Speaking in New York City, Standing with Strikers in West Virginia” →