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Hellraisers Journal – Saturday January 23, 1904
Kate S. Hilliard Defends Mother Jones from Vicious Attack by Polly Pry
From Goodwin’s Weekly (Salt Lake City, Utah) of January 16, 1904:
Tag: Polly Pry
Hellraisers Journal: Scandal Monger, Polly Pry, Claims Mother Jones Could be Former Madam Who Once Ran Houses of Ill-Repute
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Hellraisers Journal – Friday January 22, 1904
Denver, Colorado – The Polly Pry Claims Mother Jones Could Be Former Madam
Leonel Ross Campbell, Denver journalist now turned scandal monger, writing under the name of Polly Pry, has recently directed her prying gaze upon Mother Jones. In her magazine, The Polly Pry, Campbell claims to have evidence, supplied by the Pinkertons, that “proves” that Mother Jones once ran various houses of ill-repute in Denver, Omaha, Kansas City, Chicago, and San Francisco. The file, it is claimed, dates back to 1889.
According to the report, Mother Jones could be the madam who hired the “best looking girls on the row” for her house on Market Street in Denver where she went broke after her paramour, “Black-leg,” supposedly ran off with one of her girls. She then began drinking and was arrested and jailed several times. The Prying Polly further reported that this woman was:
…an inmate of Jennie Rogers’ house on Market street, Denver, some twelve years ago. She got into trouble with the Rogers woman for bribing all of her girls to leave her and go to a house in Omaha-for which act she was paid a procuress fee of $5 to $10 apiece for the girls.
She was a confidential servant in Rose Lovejoy’s private house on Market street, Denver, and with her several years. …
Lived in Eva Lewis’ house on Market street at the time the Coxey Army passed through here, and took a prominent part in the Denver preparation for their care.
Is known to Harry Loss, a piano player at 1925 Market street, who says he knew her first in Omaha in 1894, when she lived in a house at tenth and Douglass.
She was then selling clothes to the girls. A sewing woman for the sporting class living on Lawrence street…says it was commonly reported that she was a procuress by trade.
[Emphasis added.]
The Pinkerton report goes on to claim that a Mary Harris (using her maiden name) was a “vulgar, heartless, vicious creature, with a fiery temper and a cold-blooded brutality rare even in the slums.”
Now, in the slander sheet which bears her pen name, Miss Polly Pry is careful to maintain a distance from her lurid charges by reporting on a supposed report on Mother Jones. Very clever of her, and also in keeping with her usual style of reporting on labor leaders who are the often made the targets of her attacks. She has previously defamed U. M. W. District 15 President Howells, U. M. W. National Organizer William Wardjon, and U. M. W. National Executive Board Member John Gehr. Anti-union newspapers across the country see fit to pick up these sordid stories from The Polly Pry and reprint them.
For her part, Mother Jones refuses to give dignity to the charges by responding to them in any way. U. M. W. attorneys doubt that a law suit would be successful since the charges made by The Polly Pry are implied rather than made directly.
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Hellraisers Journal: Goodwin’s Weekly: Polly Pry, in Recent Issue, Pays Her Respects to Mother Jones, “Hideous Hag”
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Hellraisers Journal – Monday December 7, 1903
Polly Pry Pays Her Respects to Mother Jones, “The Hideous Hag”
From Goodwin’s Weekly of December 5, 1903:
From the Duluth Labor World of December 5, 1903
-Mother Jones, Lioness, Miner’s Angel and Patron Saint:
[Photo from Denver Post of November 22, 1903]
Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for May 1910, Part I: Found Speaking for Workers in Sioux City, Iowa, and Fort Wayne, Indiana
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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.
[Photograph added.]
Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for June 1916: Arizona Newspaper Revives Polly Pry
There are no limits to which
powers of privilege will not go
to keep the workers in slavery.
-Mother Jones
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Thursday July 6, 1916
Mother Jones Defamed by Newspaper of Clifton, Arizona
The Copper Era of Clifton, Arizona, took on both Mother Jones and Charles Moyer, President of the Western Federation of Miners, in a pair of articles published on June 2nd of this year. It is doubtful that the opinion of the kept press regarding Moyer’s supposed radicalism will weigh into the miners decision one way or the other when they gather at their convention later this month.
The Copper Era took note of the fact that Mother Jones came to Arizona to lend her support to Governor Hunt, friend of the copper miners, and that she is also a close associate of Charles Moyer, and has been for a very long time. In a long article, that newspaper revived the old charges made against Mother in 1904 by the scandal-sheet, Polly Pry. Those charges were then read into the Congressional Record in June of 1914 by Congressman Kindel of Colorado. The goal is to defame Mother Jones in eyes of working people-a waste of ink, as that tactic has been tried before and has never succeeded.
Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for June 1916: Arizona Newspaper Revives Polly Pry”
Hellraisers Journal: The Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones, Socialist Party Organizer, for June 1906
You ought to be out raising hell.
This is the fighting age.
Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Thursday July 5, 1906
Mother Jones on Tour in Missouri and Arkansas for Socialist Party
Today Hellraisers pauses to catch up with Mother Jones and to document her whereabouts and doings for the month of June 1906. We find Mother travelling and speaking from town to town in Illinois, Missouri and Arkansas as an organizer for the Socialist Party of America.
On the 15th of June, Mother encountered a bit of excitement while speaking in Webb City, Missouri. The following was reported by a local newspaper:
John Dermott, one of Webb City’s prominent citizens, was arrested last night upon a charge of peace disturbance. Dermott took exceptions to a statement made by Mother Jones, the Socialist lecturer, and forthwith commenced to argue the matter with her. Officer Herrin placed Dermott under arrest which was resisted by that gentleman, and for a few moments a lively scuffle ensued.