—————
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday June 4, 1914
War with Mexico? by K. R. Chamberlain; “What About Mexico?” by John Reed
From The Masses of June 1914:
Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From The Masses: “What About Mexico” by John Reed”
—————
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday May 28, 1914
New York, New York – Mother Jones Speaks at Dinner of Wealthy Society Women
From The New York Times of May 23, 1914:
While we at Hellraisers disagree with Mother Jones on the issue of woman’s suffrage, we will point out that many of the woman of the Colorado mining camps also have no vote for either they are non-citizens, or if they do have the right to vote, then their vote is stolen by coal companies, as are the votes of their husbands and fathers-for, in the closed company towns, they vote under the supervision of the company guards. The lack of a vote has not stopped these women from raising hell. Perhaps, these wealthy woman have something to learn from their less fortunate sisters of the Colorado strike zone.
500 WOMEN CHEER FOR
MOTHER JONES———-
Not a Man Allowed at Dinner Given for
Agitator by Six of Her Admirers.
———-SUFFRAGISTS GET A SHOCK
———-
Guest Says Colorado Mine Owner Ascribed Control
Over the Workers to the Women’s Votes.
———-Mother Jones, the agitator, gave women some lights on suffrage at a dinner given for her at the Café Boherne, Second Avenue and Tenth Street, last evening. Not a man was allowed at the gathering.
Mother Jones spoke an hour and a half, and then read a few facts. She told the women they must stand for free speech in the streets, that it was their right, and they must have it.
“But how can we get it, mother? We haven’t the vote,” cried a voice from the audience.
“I have no vote,” answered Mother Jones cheerfully, “and I’ve raised hell all over this country.”
The entire roomful of women shrieked with glee. The dinner was arranged by six women-Katherine Leckle, Marie Jenney Howe, Edna Kenton, Fola La Follette, Rose Young, and Florence Woolston– and the number of guests was limited to 500. There were writers, artists, women of wealth, a a few suffrage leaders, and women interested in labor movements and philanthropy.
Mother Jones was kept quietly in a rear room while the diner was in progress to conserve her strength, but she showed no weight of her 82 years when she went into the big dining room and stood on a chair to speak. The women, standing, gave cheers of welcome. Mother Jones is fond of the frills and accessories of dress. She wore a figured bodice with the dark skirt of her gown. There were ruffles at the neck and wrists, little dingley ornaments at the latter and her white hair was arranged in the style that was known some years ago as a “French twist.” In front it had been cut in something of a bang and fluffed over her forehead. There were two little side combs and a glittering ornament was at the base of the twist.
Behind her gold-rimmed, gold-bowed glasses, Mother Jones’s blue eyes twinkled. She likes to talk, and she does not mind using what she calls classic language. Her talk was more or less of a rambling description of different strikes in which she had taken part, with sometimes thrilling and often amusing descriptions.
“There is going to be no speaking,” said Miss Leckle, who introduced her, “and only one talk by the biggest woman in the world. She loves every man, woman, and child in it, and we love her.”
Mother Jones started in, beginning with Rome, so it was not surprising that it took her nearly two hours to tell the women all about it. The remarks on suffrage were an interlude, and a surprise to many, and she said things about the Colorado women to which some of the guests took exception.
“Some one says I’m an anti-suffragist,” said Mother Jones. “Well, that’s a horrible crime. I’ll tell you something, girls.”
The women smiled at that nice little familiar word.
“I’m not an anti to anything that will bring freedom. But I’m going to be honest with you about those women in Colorado. There is no use in throwing bouquets. They have had the vote for nineteen years, and this is what someone who was present at a meeting of mine owners told me. One of the men proposed disenfranchising the women and another jumped to his feet and shouted.
“‘For God’s sake, what are you talking about. If it hadn’t been for the women, the miners would have beat us long ago.’”
There was a gasp of horror from the women in the room, and one woman asked if Mother Jones would not explain that statement.
“You see,” said Mother Jones, “the women got the vote without knowing anything about the civic conditions, but now they are waking up, and when the women in America wake up there will be something done. A woman in a comfortable home who is reading her books and amusing her children says to me:
“‘Why really, we didn’t know anything about these terrible conditions.’
“‘Well,’ I answered, ‘I was 1,800 miles away and I knew all about it.’
“I don’t believe in the rights of women or the rights of men, but human rights. No country can rise higher than its women, and I don’t have to see the mother to know what she is. I can tell when I see the man she has raised. And there are not as many good mothers as there should be.”
In telling the women to go on with their work Mother Jones said:
“Never mind if you are not lady like, you are woman-like. God Almighty made the woman and the Rockefeller gang of thieves made the ladies.”
Speaking of Mexico, she told of her acquaintance with Villa. “I went over to see Villa, and I was wishing to God that we had two or three Villas in this country.”
Mrs. Havelock Ellis was one of the women at the speakers’ table with Mrs. John F. Trow, Dr. Gertrude Kelley, and Miss Livinia Dock. Among others present were Mrs. Frank Cothren, Mess Elizabeth Dutcher, Mrs. Mary Ware Dennett, Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Mrs. Calvin Tomkins, Mrs. Robert Adamson, Maria Thompson Davies, Lou Rogers, Miss Knox, and Maude Malone.
[Emphasis added.]
—————
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday April 5, 1914
Walsenburg, Colorado – Mother Jones Smuggles out Letter from Cold Cellar Cell
From the Chicago Day Book of April 3, 1914:
March 31, 1914-from the Cold Cellar Cell, Walsenburg, Colorado,
Letter to Friends of Mother Jones and to the Public Generally:
Military Bastile
Walsenburg, Colo.
. March 31, 1914To My Friends and the Public Generally:
I am being held a prisoner incommunicado in a damp, underground cell, in the basement of a military bullpen at Walsenburg, Colorado. Have been here since 5:30 a.m. of the 23rd of March, when I was taken from the train by armed soldiers as I was passing through Walsenburg. I have discovered what appears to be an opportunity to smuggle a letter out of prison, and shall attempt to get this communication by the armed guards which day and night surround me (me, a white-haired old woman eighty-two years of age).
I want to say to the public that I am an American citizen. I have never broken a law in my life, and I claim the right of an American citizen to go where I please so long as I do not violate the law. The courts of Las Animas and Huerfano are open and unobstructed in the transaction of business, yet Governor Ammons and his Peabody appointee, General Chase, refuse to carry me before any court, and refuse to make any charge against me.I ask the press to let the nation know of my treatment, and to say to my friends, whom, thank God, I number by the thousands, throughout the United States and Mexico, that not even my incarceration in a damp, underground dungeon will make me give up the fight in which I am engaged for liberty and for the rights of the working people.
Of course, I long to be out of prison. To be shut from the sunlight is not pleasant, but John Bunyan, John Brown and others were kept in Jail quite a while, and I shall stand firm. To be in prison is no disgrace. In all my strike experiences I have seen no horrors equal to those perpetrated by General Chase and his corps of Baldwin-Feltz detectives that are now enlisted in the militia.My God–when is it to stop? I have only to close my eyes to see the mourning of the broken hearts and the wailing of the funeral dirge, while the cringing politicians whose sworn duty is to protect the lives and liberty of the people crawl subserviently before the national burglars of Wall Street who are today plundering and devastating the State of Colorado economically, financially, politically and morally.
Let the nation know, and especially let my friend General Francisco Villa know, that the great United States of America, which is demanding of him that he release the traitors he has placed under arrest, is now holding Mother Jones incommunicado in an under ground cell surrounded with sewer rats, tinhorn soldiers and other vermin.Mother Jones[As written, without correction; paragraph break added.]
—————-
Hellraisers Journal – Monday March 23, 1914
“General Villa’s Ultimatum to President Wilson”
From the Appeal to Reason of March 21, 1914:
—————
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday March 22, 1914
Denver, Colorado – Mother Jones Arrives After Deportation from Trinidad
-Meets with John Lawson and Horace Hawkins
From the Denver United Labor Bulletin of March 21, 1914:
“Mother” Jones and John R. Lawson.
Remarkable likeness of the 82-year-old Camp Angel, telling her story to John R. Lawson, Executive Board member U. M. W., Monday [March 16th] after arrival in Denver from Trinidad, where she was detained as military prisoner for 9 weeks.
From The Denver Post of March 16, 1914
-Statement of Mother Jones after Deportation from Trinidad:
—————
Hellraisers Journal – Monday March 9, 1914
Trinidad, Colorado – Writ of Habeas Corpus Denied for Mother Jones
From El Paso Herald of March 6, 1914:
MILITIA MAY HOLD WOMAN, COURT RULES
———-
Judge Denies Writ of Habeas Corpus
in the Case of “Mother” Jones.
———-POWER OF MILITARY OFFICIALS UPHELD
———-
Trinidad, Colo., March 6.-In a verbal decision rendered at the opening of the district court this morning, Judge A. W. McHendrie denied the writ of habeas corpus for “Mother” Mary Jones, the noted woman strike leader held under military guard at the San Rafael Hospital, and remanded the prisoner to the custody of the respondent in the action, Gen. John Chase, commander of the state militia in the strike zone.
The ruling of the court was brief. Immediately upon hearing the decision, attorney F. W. Clark, local counsel for the United Mine Workers, asked for and was granted 60 days to prepare a bill of exceptions to be submitted to the supreme court.
Like [Albert] Hill Case, Says Court.
The court held the case in all essential respects to be the same as the case instituted early in February for others who were held prisoners by the military authorities for alleged connection with the burning of the Southwestern mine tipple and postoffice.
The court in its ruling upheld the powers of the military authorities in arresting and detaining the petitioner under specific instructions form governor Ammons, who in his order to Gen. Chase, declared the woman to be a “dangerous person” and one likely to raise riot or disorder.
To Appeal Case.
But few people were in court when the opinion was rendered this morning. The attorneys for the petitioner will now submit the case on appeal to the supreme court, which a short time ago denied an original application.
[Drawing and emphasis added.]
—————
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday January 17, 1914
Trinidad, Colorado – Chase: Mother Jones is “an Inciter of Violence and a Disturber”
From the Trinidad Chronicle News of January 15, 1914
-200 Women Invade Hotel, Demand Gen. Chase Release Mother Jones:
From The Day Book of January 16, 1914
-Mother Jones on Mexican “Bandits” and Colorado Soldiers:
—————
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday January 13, 1914
Trinidad, Colorado – Mother Jones Seized by State Militia, Held at San Rafael Hospital
From the Trinidad Chronicle News of January 12, 1914:
“Mother” Mary Jones, nationally known as a strike leader, is a military prisoner at the San Rafael hospital where she is being held incommunicado. The woman, who was deported from the strike zone Sunday, January 4, by the military authorities and warned not to return to the district under pain of immediate arrest, accepted the defi and returned this morning. She slipped quietly out of Denver at midnight on a C. & S. train.
That she expected arrest is indicated by her action in alighting at the D. & R. G. crossing this morning instead of waiting until the train reached the station. She walked to the Toltec hotel alone and took a room but did not register at once. The fact of her presence became known to the military authorities about eleven o’clock and a few moments later a military detail in command of Lieut. H. O. Nichols entered her room, placed her in an automobile and whirled her away to the hospital at full speed, with a swarm of cavalry men galloping behind the machine.
Apparently the only object of the aged strike leader had in returning to Trinidad was to see if the threat to arrest her would be carried out. It was. “Mother” Jones was apparently not surprised at the action but was loud in her denunciation of the “military despots who stab and spit upon constitutional rights.” She declares she has viloated no law and that she is willing to face any sort of a civil inquiry. “Why take me to a hospital?” she shouted at Lieut. Nichols , when arrested. “I am not sick! Why not take me to jail?” The prisoner made it clear that she was even more willing to be placed in a cell “for the sake of the cause.”
[…..]
[Paragraph break and emphasis added.]
—————
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday January 4, 1914
El Paso, Texas – Mother Speaks, Praises Pancho Villa and the Rebels
From El Paso Herald of January 3, 1914:
Why should the workingmen fight for
the robbers of Wall street?
Let them fight their own battles.
-Mother Jones
That old blood sucker,
the kaiser, ought to
be kicked off his throne.
-Mother Jones
Hellraisers Journal, Wednesday April 4, 1917
Des Moines, Iowa – Mother Jones Speaks Out on European War
Overnight, perhaps reacting to the War Resolution now before Congress upon the request of President Wilson for same, Mother reversed her stand regarding American involvement in the terrible slaughter now taking place between the waring nations of Europe. In an interview reported by the April 2nd edition of The Des Moines Register, Mother declared:
I hate war. We must not throw our American workingmen into olive drab uniforms, stick guns in their hands, and ship them over to France to be fresh slaughter for the cannons of the devilish kings of Europe.
If John D Rockefeller, Morgan, the Guggenheims, or Wall street wants to see Germany defeated, let them go over and fight in the allies’ trenches. Why should the workingmen fight for the robbers of Wall street? Let them fight their own battles, says I!
The next day, the Register reported that Mother had “abandoned her neutrality:”
That old blood sucker, the kaiser, ought to be kicked off his throne, and if he ever starts anything with this country we will lick hell out of him if I have to raise a regiment of 10,000 women myself.
Thus “Mother” Jones, firebrand speaker, abandoned her neutrality in a speech that held spellbound the miners of the thirteenth district, U. M. W. A., who were celebrating the nineteenth anniversary of the securing of the eight-hour day for miners at the Coliseum yesterday afternoon.
