Hellraisers Journal – Friday December 23, 1921 Coal Mining Region of Southeastern Kansas- “Amazon Army” Raises Hell
From the New York Evening World of December 20, 1921:
SIX MORE WOMEN RIOTERS ARRESTED Police of State and Nation Extend Drive in Kansas Coal Field Against Bootlegging.
PITTSBURG, Kan., Dec. 20. Six more women, charged with unlawful assemblyin connection with the coal mine riots were under arrest today as State and county officials broadened their offensive against illegal rum venders, radicals and other undesirables of the mine fields….
From Washington Evening Star of December 21, 1921:
From the Albuquerque Evening Herald of December 22, 1921:
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday June 4, 1911 Greensburg, Pennsylvania – Miners’ Wives Sing on Their Way to Jail
From the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader of June 2, 1911:
MINERS’ WIVES ARE JAILED WHEN THEY SHOUT AT WORKERS ———- Eleven Torn from Families on Complaint of Coal Company Officials at Greensburg. ———-
TWO WERE CARRYING BABES —– Prisoners Will Have to Spend Thirty Days in Jail Unless Judge Changes Mind. —–
GREENSBURG, Pa., June 2.-With tearful faces, but defiant in their stand for their husbands, who are striking miners in the Irwin coal fields, eleven women were torn from their husbands and children, who had accompanied them to the Westmoreland county jail, and locked up to serve thirty-day sentences, imposed for disorderly conduct.
The women are from Westmoreland City, and it was alleged by the prosecutors, who are officers of the coal company, that the women had made the night hideous for the inhabitants with their shouting and had been a menace to the men who were working for the company [scabs].
They were arrested on warrants issued before Squire H. A. Meerhoff, of Irwin, who sentenced them.
Two of the prisoners, Mrs. Margaret Means and Mrs. Dot Smith, carried babies in their arms. A crowd gathered around the jail when it became known that a band of strikers wives were being locked up.
Judge A. D. McConnell ordered twenty strikers who were brought before him from Latrobe and Bradenville, charged by the Latrobe Connellsville Coke Company with violating the court’s injunction, to pay the costs or stand committed. They were also ordered to remove their camp at Superior No. 2 within the next five days or be sent to jail.
This is the second bunch of strikers who were ordered to pay the costs for violating the court’s injunction issued a year ago restraining them from marching “by or near” company property. There is some talk among the United Mine Workers of making an appeal from the court’s decision, especially in the matter of ordering them to remove their camp, which is located on private property which they have leased.
—————
[Newsclip added from Pittsburg Post of June 2, 1911]
Hellraisers Journal – Friday November 30, 1900 Mother Jones News Round-Up for October 1900, Part V Found Declaring Victory in Grand March on Panther Creek
From the Philadelphia Times of October 18, 1900:
THE MINE WORKERS STRONGER THAN EVER ———-
(Written for Th Times by “Mother” Jones.)
Hazleton, October 17.
Our victory in closing the mines in Panther Creek, which have been working steadily for years and which have never ceased to operate during a strike, shows that the United Miners to-day are more powerful than ever and perfectly able to continue the struggle for mouths. The only possible solution of the strike is for the mine operators to make the small concessions asked.
There is no reason in the world why they should not do so, because coal is bringing higher prices to-day than ever before. Railroad rails are cheaper than they have been in years, making the profits of the operators double what they have been. Yet the mine workers have received no increase in pay nor benefit from this increased prosperity whatsoever. This means that the hard coal [anthracite] trust is getting richer every day while the workers are getting poorer. How the operators can refuse the concessions I cannot see.
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday November 29, 1900 Mother Jones News Round-Up for October 1900, Part IV Found with Strikers and Army of Mining Women Marching on Panther Creek
From the Hazleton Plain Speaker of October 16, 1900:
The four thousand strikers from Hazleton, Freeland and the South Side who left McAdoo at midnight last night to close down the collieries of the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Co. in the Panther Creek Valley, where operations have been carried on without interruption since the beginning of the strike, did not get at the mines but Nesquehoning was rendered idle and all the other collieries are somewhat crippled. The strikers were met on the outskirts of Coal Dale, which was their first objective point, by eight companies of the Fourth Regiment in command of Colonel O’Neill, of Allentown, and driven back into Tamaqua and the strikers who paraded the streets of that town were dispersed at the point of bayonet. The presence of the soldiers was a complete surprise to the marchers. Many of the latter returned home at noon today while others remained and will use their persuasive powers tonight to induce the men who are at work to join the strike movement. Several of the strikers were arrested.
The March Begins.
The strikers collected at McAdoo. Large crowds were seen wending their way over the hills to the South Side and when the word was passed along the line to move on it is estimated that there were about 3,500 men in the ranks.
The strikers from the upper Schuylkill region were to have met the McAdoo people at Hometown, but when the South Siders got there they were disappointed, as not a striker from upper Schuylkill was to be seen.
A delegation of about five hundred, comprising the strikers from Hazleton and the North Side, moved over the Beaver Meadow road and joined the South Siders at Hometown, a small place some distance north of Tamaqua. From Hometown the strikers marched about four abreast to the outskirts of Coal Dale.
“Mother” Jones There.
There were a number of women in line, among them “Mother” Jones and Miss Brennan, of McAdoo, who carried an American flag and who was to have led the men to the Coal Dale collieries.
The Honey Brook band and several drum corps were also in line. The band played almost continuously from the time the men left McAdoo until they got within a half mile of Coal Dale. The music had a wonderfully inspiring effect on the men and aroused people every where along the route.
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday September 27, 1900 Pennsylvania – Mother Jones Leads Army of Women from McAdoo to Coleraine
From The Philadelphia Inquirer of September 23, 1900:
Sketched on the Spot by an Inquirer Staff Artist. —————
WOMEN FIRED TO FRENZY MARCH ON MINES AND HUGGING THE WORKERS THEY FORCE THEM TO LEAVE THEIR POST ——- Females Led by Mother Jones Form a Strange and Remarkable Procession-Shouting and Waving Their Arms They Dance to Martial Music
From a Staff Correspondent.
HAZLETON, PA., Sept. 22-Unless there is a speedy close down of the mines whose operators persist in keeping them running with armed protection, there s going to be trouble in this district. When it comes, the women will be at the bottom of it. In the early hours this morning they swooped down upon Coleraine and Beaver Meadows. They were led by Mother Jones. They marched with a band at their head, the men falling back in the rear. In the journey some of the party were girls, who gave way to the wildest abandon and danced and shouted, waving their arms in the air.
On arriving at Coleraine, emotional frenzy reached its limit. The men who on their way to work were seized, When cold argument failed some of the women threw their arms about the miners’ necks and exercised all their powers of pleading. Unable to resist the demonstrative actions of the women, the miners gave in, and consented to return to their homes.
Flushed with victory, the raiding party proceeded on to Beaver Meadow. There were about a hundred women in it, and male recruits had been picked up all along the road, so that the entire aggregation numbered five or six hundred. They reached Beaver Meadow too late for any demonstration with the miners, as they were in the colliery at work.
Hellraisers Journal – Monday December 13, 1909
Spokane, Washington – Elizabeth Gurley Flynn Fights for Free Speech
From the Socialist Montana News of December 2, 1909:
A WOMAN LABOR AGITATOR.
The tour of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn through the west, and the strenuous work she has been performing in generaling the Free Speech fights has introduced to this section of country and earnest and energetic young woman.
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn is a married woman of New York, whose agitation in the labor movement has excited much attention in the capitalist press, and a certain amount in the labor and socialist press; although the attention given her by the latter has been by no means commensurate with the ability of her work, and the impression it has made upon those who have heard and seen her. But Elizabeth Gurley Flynn has broken into the labor movement under peculiar conditions. Reared in a socialist home, she grew up with her mind intelligent and keen as to the homogeneity of the socialist and labor movements, an idea that is as yet scarcely grasped at all in America, either by the great mass of laborers or the majority of the socialists themselves. To be a socialist, a social reformer, meant to Miss Flynn to work in the labor movement.
When the Industrial Workers of the World was organised she thought she saw in its methods the ideal line of activity for the workers to adopt, who were bent upon industrial emancipation through a revolutionary program. She became devoted to the interest of the Industrial Workers. She refused to ally herself with either the Socialist Party or the Socialist Labor Party because of their failure to co-operate decidedly with the I. W. W.
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday November 23, 1909
Spokane, Washington – Letter from Agnes Thecla Fair Describes Jail Horrors
From Seattle Workingman’s Paper of November 20, 1909:
THE SHAME OF SPOKANE
—–
We publish the following letter without the consent of its author. We believe the interests of truth demand its publication. When we first read it we could not believe it. Even now it seems impossible that such cowardly and brutal treatment could be accorded a helpless woman, even among savages. Yet we know the capitalist system has developed far lower moral types than savagery or barbarism ever knew. We know, too that daily revelations are made of jail horrors almost as bad as this. Read what Mrs. [Bessy] Fiset tells in her department, “The Woman,” in this paper [page 4].
Those who know Agnes Thecla Fair will not hesitate to credit what she testifies to. She is a quiet, frail, unassuming little woman, some 25 years old, who is publishing a book called “The Sourdoughs’ Bible.” She was drawn into the Spokane Free Speech Fight because she happened to be in that city soliciting for her book, and wherever she is she cannot refrain from taking the side of the under dog….
———-
MISS FAIR’S LETTER
—–
Spokane, Wash., Nov. 11, ’09
Dr. Hermon Titus and Mrs. Titus.
Dear Comrades and Friends:
Well, to put it mildly, Mrs. Titus came very near getting that copyright. I am now labeled by police as a DANGEROUS CHARACTER. My offense was mixing in free speech fight and behaving so different from other women arrested.
I made four jumps, as the box filled with dry goods, standing at Howard and Riverside in front of the White House was a high one. I talked for ten minutes and had a large crowd, when a detective came up and took me down from my high pedestal. He wanted me to walk to the station, but as I had never rode in a hurry-up wagon I asked to ride.
While waiting for a private automobile the crowd grew to thousands. Taking out a red handkerchief as I entered the wagon, I stood up and waved it at the crowd. Cheers went up for Free Speech.
Little did I dream of what was coming after in this enlightened age. You will pardon language used to get at facts, as I never heard anything so vile. They put me in a cell with a fallen woman and left. They were gone but a few minutes when two officers returned and (although the other woman was not to go until Monday, she told me), they told her to get ready in two minutes and get out.
When she was gone they put me in a dark cell, and about ten big burly brutes came in and began to question me about our union. I was so scared I could not talk. One said, “We’ll make her talk” Another said, “She’ll talk before we get through with her.”
Another said,”F–k her and she’ll talk.” Just then one started to unbutton my waist, and I went into spasms which I never recovered from until evening.
No matter what your fight, don’t be ladylike!
God Almighty made women and
the Rockefeller gang of thieves made the ladies.
-Mother Jones
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Friday July 21, 1916
From Solidarity: Miss Flynn on Organizing Women
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World who recently arrived in northern Minnesota to assist with the strike of the iron miners of the Mesabi Range, on July 15th had published in that organization’s weekly journal, Solidarity, an article on the problems of organizing women. Miss Flynn encourages working women to rebel against the limits enforced against them by the prevailing attitudes which dictate that women should be “lady-like” and stick to tending home and children. Today we offer part one of the article; part two will appear in tomorrow’s Hellraisers Journal. Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From Solidarity: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn on “Problems Organizing Women,” Part I”→
—————
——
—————
———
———-
———-
———-
———-
