Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Speaks at Convention of United Mine Workers: We must learn to bear each other’s burdens.

29th January 202112th February 2021 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote Mother Jones, Love Each Other, UMWC Ipl IN, Jan 25, 1901 ———-

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday January 29, 1901
Indianapolis, Indiana – Mother Jones Speaks to Miners, Part II

January 25, 1901-Convention of United Mine Workers of America:

In New York they are going to give a charity ball. I suppose it is a kind of restitution to the people they have been robbing for years. They will spend thousands and thousands of dollars for decorating their old carcasses, and they go into a hall and admire one another; and if we were to sit up in the gallery and venture to look at them they would wonder what such a lot of Wops wanted in the world anyhow. Then some smart newspaper man will take his gilt pen and sit down and write of the beautiful Mr. So and So who was there, and of the beautiful Mrs. So and So who was there, and how they were dressed, and how splendid it all was.

Splendid! Yes, my friends, but they are dancing on the minds and hearts of the men and women they have robbed, dancing on the hearts of the little children who are working in their factories and of the boys and girls working everywhere.

In Freeland [Pennsylvania] I held a meeting for the boys and girls from the silk mills. They were on a strike and one morning they tried to keep the scab children from working. The children went into the factory to work, and the poor little outside ones entered a protest and called them “Blackleg,” and “scab,” and a burly policeman took one girl by the hair of the head and dragged her to the police station and she was put under three hundred dollars bond. The bond was furnished and they took her home, but the fright and ill treatment had made her ill, and she had three hemorrhages of the lungs. There was not a dollar in the house to get food or medicine or a doctor for her. Think of that.

When the children stood on the platform of a hall we had hired for them to expose the corporations one little boy of twelve came to the front and told us that he worked thirteen hours at night, that they paid him one cent an hour; but that these same people had gone to the church and put in a magniﬁcent stained glass window in it. Did you ever hear a minister say one word about the condition of these children? We did not ﬁnd one minister to defend these children.

In the Scriptures they can see where the Master said, “Suffer little children to come unto me.” My friends, I believe we should clasp our hands and come out together in defense of these little children. I can see an appeal in their eyes which seems to ask what they have done that they should be battered and knocked about as they are. There are children under age in those factories.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Speaks at Convention of United Mine Workers: We must learn to bear each other’s burdens.” →

Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Speaks at Convention of United Mine Workers: “You have traveled over stormy paths.”

28th January 202128th January 2021 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote Mother Jones, Stormy Paths, UMWC Ipl IN, Jan 25, 1901 ———–

Hellraisers Journal – Monday January 28, 1901
Indianapolis, Indiana – Mother Jones Speaks to Miners, Part I

January 25, 1901-Convention of United Mine Workers of America:

Mother Jones, at Her Lecture Stand, Detail, Phl Iq p1, Sept 24, 1900

President Mitchell: Ladies and gentlemen: There are few persons in the Industrial movement who have impressed themselves upon the toilers as has the one who will address you this afternoon. During the long years of struggle in which the miners engaged they have had no more staunch supporter, no more able defender than the one we all love to call Mother. I don’t believe there is a Mine Worker from one end of the country to the other who does not know her name. It gives me great pleasure to pre- sent to you this afternoon Mother Jones.

Mrs. Mary Jones: Fellow toilers, it seems strange that you should have selected the month of January for your conventions. It has a lesson by which you may well proﬁt, and no craft needs more to proﬁt by that lesson than the miners. The month of January represents two seasons, a part of the dead winter and a part of the beautiful coming spring. I realize as well as you do that you have traveled over stormy paths, that you have rubbed up against the conflict of the age, but I am here to say that you have come out victorious, and in the future you will stand as the grand banner organization. My brothers, we are entering on a new age. We are confronted by conditions such as the world perhaps has never met before in her history.

We have in the last century solved one great problem that has confronted the ages in the mighty past. It had ever been the riddle of the people of the world. The problem of production has been solved for the human race; the problem of this country will lie with the workers to solve, that great and mighty and important problem, the problem of possession. You have in your wisdom, in your quiet way, with a little uprising here and a little uprising there solved the problem of the age. You have done your work magnificently and well; but we have before us yet the grandest and greatest work of civilization.

We have before us the emancipation of the children of this nation. In the days gone by we found the parents filled with love and affection. As the mother looked upon her new-born boy, as she pressed him to her bosom, she thought, “Some day, he will be the man of this nation; some day I shall sacrifice myself for the education, the developing of his brain, the bringing out of his grander, nobler qualities. But, oh, my brothers, that is past, that has been killed! Today, my friends, we look into the eyes of the child of the Proletariat as it enters into the conflict of this life, and we see the eyes of the poor, helpless little creature appealing to those who have inhabited the world before it. Now when the father comes home the first question he asks is “Mary, is it a boy or a girl?” When she answers, “It is a boy, John,” he says, “Well, thank God! he will soon be able to go to the breakers and help earn a living with me.” If it is a girl there is no loving kiss, no caress for her for she cannot be put to the breakers to satisfy capitalistic greed.

But my friends, the capitalistic class has met you face to face today to take the girls as well as the boys out of the cradle. Wherever you are in mighty numbers they have brought their factories to take your daughters and slaughter them on the altar of capitalistic greed. They have built their mines and breakers to take your boys out of the cradle; they have built their factories to take your girls; they have built on the bleeding, quivering hearts of yourselves and your children their palaces. They have built their magniﬁcent yachts and palaces; they have brought the sea from mid-ocean up to their homes where they can take their baths—and they don’t give you a chance to go to the muddy Missouri and take a bath in it.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Speaks at Convention of United Mine Workers: “You have traveled over stormy paths.”” →

Hellraisers Journal: West Virginia Coal Miners Killed in Explosion at Red Ash Mine in New River District

8th March 20207th March 2020 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote If Blood Be the Price, LRSB 15th Ed p27, 1919 ———-

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday March 8, 1900
Red Ash, West Virginia – Explosion Brings Death to Coal Miners

From The New York Times of March 7, 1900:

Fire Creek, W. Va., March 6.-The most disastrous mine explosion ever known in the New River District occurred at the Red Ash Mine shortly after the miners went to work this morning. Although the most heroic work of the rescuing party has been going on incessantly all day and night it is impossible tonight to estimate the full extent of the loss of life and property.

The most reliable estimates obtainable put the number of the victims at nearly 50. The capacity of the mine is 175, but there have been only 130 on the payrolls so far this month. The manager, Superintendent, bosses, bookkeepers, and others are busy with the force of rescuers, but at the same time they are all very reticent as to the extent of the casualties and any other information regarding the disaster.

More than fifty dead bodies have already been taken out, thirty-eight of which have been identified and are lying in their former homes. It is thought tonight that at least seventy-five miners are yet entombed in the wrecked mine.

Most of the bodies that cannot be identified or recognized have been placed in the large blacksmith’s shop of the Red Ash Coal Company, and that place presents the appearance of a horrible morgue. Although the bodies are mangled beyond recognition, yet they are surrounded by those who are in distress and hunting their lost friends.

The general belief is that the explosion occurred by contact of the miners’ lights with dust when the miners entered this morning.

Those working on the rescue relays say that the scene becomes more terrible as they get further into the mine. The men become almost faint of heart when they strike a place filled with dead bodies. The work of rescue is being continued during the night, and will be kept up until the mine is clear.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: West Virginia Coal Miners Killed in Explosion at Red Ash Mine in New River District” →