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Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday February 17, 1909
Mother Jones News Round-Up for January 1909, Part II:
-Found Speaking at Convention of United Mine Workers of America
From The Indianapolis Star of January 29, 1909:
Tag: Russian Revolutionaries
Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for January 1909, Part I; Found in Girard, Kansas, and in Springfield, Illinois
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Hellraisers Journal – Monday February 15, 1909
Mother Jones News Round-Up for January 1909, Part I:
-Found Writing and Speaking on Behalf of Mexican Patriots
During the month of January 1909, we first find Mother Jones in the pages of the Appeal to Reason advocating on behalf of the Mexican Patriots imprisoned in the United States and facing deportation to Mexico where certain death awaits them at the hands of the Tyrant, Porfirio Díaz.
Hellraisers Journal of January 10th republished an article from the Appeal to Reason of January 9, 1909, in which Mother was quoted:
The Appeal can and will arouse the American People. Its voice rings like a clarion over all the nation. How the hearts of the refugees must be cheered when they hear the Appeal’s ringing challenge to the czar of Russia and the dictator of Mexico! More power to the Appeal! May every one of its more than three hundred thousand readers resolve this very hour to double its circulation, that a million more American people can be shaken from their lethargy and swell the mighty protest against Russian bastiles and Mexican dungeons on American soil.
[Photograph added.]
Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Speaks to Convention of United Mine Workers on Behalf of Mexican Revolutionaries, Part II
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Hellraisers Journal – Saturday January 30, 1909
Indianapolis, Indiana – Mother Speaks at U. M. W. Convention, Part II
From Proceedings of United Mine Workers Convention
-Wednesday January 27, 1909
Speech of Mother Jones, Part II:
Now, I will tell you what I am here today for. I am not here to beg. I hate beggars; I don’t want any begging machines; I want to do away with every begging parasite in the world. I want to fight and take what belongs to us. What I want here today with you is this: We have got to get those boys out of jail. We have got to let them live in this land; we have got to let them fight Mexico from here. And I am with those boys because Diaz and Harriman and Rockefeller and the whole push are together down there. They were down there wining and dining, and we paid for it.
And while I am on this wining and dining subject I am going to say something about the board member from Pennsylvania, Miles Dougherty. I want to talk to you Pennsylvania fellows. You had an awful fight there. I was out West and took up a paper and read of Mr. Miles Dougherty sitting down with his feet under the table looking Mrs. Harriman square in the eye and putting a bowl of champagne inside of his stomach— “Here’s a health to you, Mr. Belmont; here’s a health to you, Miss Morgan, and here’s a health to you, Mrs. Harriman.” And then, when Mrs. Harriman and Miss Morgan walked down the street with Miles Dougherty the fellows over home in Pennsylvania said, “Don’t you see how labor is getting recognized?” How labor is getting recognized! That’s true, Mr. Lewis, as sure as you sit there, they said that about labor getting recognized! I want to tell you here the trouble with you is this: your skull hasn’t developed only to the third degree. You would consider it an honor to go down the street with Miss Morgan, who never worked a day in her life. You would consider it an honor to dine with those fellows that skinned you and your children and murdered you in the mines, and while they were filling you with champagne they murdered us poor devils with bullets.
Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Speaks to Convention of United Mine Workers on Behalf of Mexican Revolutionaries
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Hellraisers Journal – Friday January 29, 1909
Indianapolis, Indiana – Mother Speaks at U. M. W. Convention, Part I
From Proceedings of United Mine Workers Convention
-Wednesday January 27, 1909
Speech of Mother Jones, Part I:
President Lewis—If there are no objections we will have a short intermission at this time and hear from a visitor we have present.
We have with us this morning a friend with whom many of the delegates are acquainted. The Mine Workers of the country generally know of the work of this friend. In many of the districts in the turbulent times when our men were engaged in a struggle, when men, women and children were suffering all the hardships incident to industrial warfare, she spent her time helping them. This morning she is here in the interest of men who have been persecuted in other countries and have come to this country in the belief that they were coming to the land of the free. We understand that the men in whose interest she is here have not committed any crime, but rather are regarded as political criminals because they believed that all men have certain rights that all other men should respect. She has encouraged our men, women and children, not alone in the mountains of West Virginia and the valleys of Pennsylvania, but on the prairies of some of our states where words of encouragement were needed by those whose spirits were drooping because of surrounding conditions. I therefore take great pleasure in introducing to this convention Mother Jones, who has lost none of her vigor, none of her interest in the cause of organized labor and in the cause of humanity because of her age or her white hair.
Mrs. Mary Jones (Mother Jones)—Permit me to extend to your worthy President my appreciation for his introduction. In the days of old when the revolutionists fought against the conditions that King George III was about to fasten upon them, could he have reached his claws in and have put them around Washington he would no doubt have hung him. Today, after a century or more of history in this nation, we find two diabolically tyrannous governments reaching their hands into this country and asking us to deliver men who have taken refuge here and surrender our rights to the czar of Russia and the military despot of Mexico. You will realize, my friends, that international economic interests are back of all this; you must realize that for this change in our nation’s history there is a cause. Economic interests, both in Mexico and Russia, are dictating the policy of our government today—I mean the other fellow’s government. As the method of production changes, the policy of the government must change to fit into it. Newspapers, magazines, churches, all must fit into the changed order. It governs home life, it governs national life, it governs the newspapers, it governs all avenues of educating the people.
Hellraisers Journal: From the Appeal to Reason: “Oh! Ye Lovers of Liberty,” Mother Jones Pleads for Our Mexican Comrades
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Hellraisers Journal: Monday January 25, 1909
Los Angeles, California – Mexican Revolutionaries Languish in Jail
From the Appeal to Reason of January 23, 1909:
BROTHERS AND COMRADES: From the bastile of capitalism in Los Angeles comes the cry of our brave brothers, calling on you to stand for freedom, right and justice. I know and feel that the cries will not be in vain. You responded cheerfully to the needs of our comrades of the industrial revolution as they were voiced from Idaho, and I know you will be none the less responsive now, in behalf of our Mexican comrades.
If ever there was a time in history when it was imperative that men and women should promptly rally to the banner of freedom and justice, that time is now. Before, it was the power of the state and the nation that the capitalists were using for the destruction of the working class. Now, it is the United States government seconding the murderous despotism of Russia and the irresponsible dictatorship of Mexico. The fight has become international; yet it centers in the United States. If these foreign vultures of oppression win now, then our liberty goes.
For Diaz and American capitalism are partners, even as American capitalism and the Russian czar are partners. Pierpont Morgan goes to Russia and shakes hands with the czar; and now the czar comes to America demanding the surrender of political refugees. Mrs. Diaz, when visiting in Texas is entertained by members of the Copper Queen syndicate whose headquarters are at 95 John street, New York, and Elihu Root, of New York, is wined and dined by the tyrant dictator, Diaz, when in Mexico.
This tyrant, this fiend, beside whom King George was a gentleman and lover of the poor, has given to American capitalists concessions that are worth millions of dollars, and guarantees them peon labor that dare not ask higher wages under penalty of being shot for violating the law; and in return he asks that if political refugees escape to America, or if a Mexican dare to come to America and criticise him, they must be returned to him, that they may be shot.
Hellraisers Journal: Eugene V. Debs Calls for Rescue of Mexican and Russian Patriots Now Held in American Jails
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Hellraisers Journal – Monday January 4, 1909
Five Patriots Illegally Imprisoned in American Jails
With a banner headline and a wide column down the center of the front page of this weeks’s Appeal to Reason, Eugene V. Debs calls for the rescue of the Mexican and Russian patriots now held for deportation by American authorities at the behest of foreign tyrants.
From the Appeal to Reason for January 2, 1909:
RESCUE THE REFUGEES
By EUGENE V. DEBS.
When Louis Kossuth, the Hungarian revolutionist, refugee from his native land for attempting to overthrow its government, reached the United States, in 1851, he was received as the “distinguished Hungarian patriot” by President Fillmore, hailed as another Washington by the American congress and welcomed by the American people amidst demonstrations of the wildest enthusiasm. He was a rebel and a revolutionist and before making his escape had been condemned for “treason” and sentenced to four years’ imprisonment “on account of taking a position favorable to six patriots who had been illegally imprisoned.”
