Hellraisers Journal – Saturday May 30, 1914 Spokane, Washington – Mother Jones Talks with Reporter While Waiting for Train
From The Seattle Star of May 29, 1914 -Mother Jones Speaks on Christians and Savages:
A MODERN HEROD, “MOTHER” JONES CALLS ROCKEFELLER ———- Aged Angel of Organized Labor, En Route to Seattle, Talks to Star Correspondent of Colorado War
By Staff Correspondent.
SPOKANE, May 29-Mother Jones talked with a reporter during a short stop here today, while she waited for her train to speed on toward Seattle, where she will take part in the Memorial Day labor parade and exercises.
With the horror of the Ludlow massacre of women and children by the hired gunmen of the mine owners still noticeable in its effect on her, she is hurrying coastward to tell the story of the modern butchery.
She wants the Northwest to know the awful details of that terrible day at Ludlow.
[Said Mother Jones:]
I wish I could stop in every city and hamlet on the Coast and throughout the West and tell the story of Ludlow as I know it. The world outside of Colorado still fails to realize the full extent of Colorado’s red history.
This charming old lady of 80 comes to the Northwest fresh from her imprisonment in Colorado for participation in the miners’ strike there.
She has written to John D. Rockefeller, jr., asking him to see her when she returns East, and let her tell him the grievances of his former employes.
She has dreamed a dream of acting as an unofficial mediator between Rockefeller and the strikers in Colorado.
[She said sadly:]
I’ll never hear at all from the young man. He hasn’t even a polite excuse for an old woman. I might have known, though, that the man who would permit his gunmen to shoot down women and boil babies in oil wouldn’t want to hear the miners’ side.
Likens Him to Herod.
But you see I’ve just come from Colorado-from the strike zone.
I have a photograph of the little boy [Frankie Snyder] whose head was shot off while he was getting a drink of water for his dying mother. I haven’t been able to get my mind off the horror of Ludlow.
I thought just for a minute that perhaps Rockefeller was not as bad as he has been painted. But I’ll never hear from him. I know it now. Why, a mother might just as well have written to Herod to ask him why he ordered the slaughter of the innocents! THAT’S ALL ROCKEFELLER IS-ANOTHER BUT CRUELER HEROD!
[Mother Jones continued, in the deep, booming voice that shows the astonishing triumph of an ageless spirit over age:
They’re all alike, those capitalists.
They’re All Savages.
They’re all Christians in China and savages in their own country.
The reason they all give so much money to foreign missions is because they wast to keep Christianity where it can’t do any harm-where it can’t interfered with BUSINESS. BUSINESS IS THEIR GOD! They all worship it.
I tell John D Rockefeller and all others like him that the men Christ scourged from the temple, the money-changers, were men LIKE HIM and MORGAN and CARNEGIE.
And I warn them that another scourging of the money-changers is close at hand!
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday March 31, 1914
Walsenburg, Colorado – Mother Jones Confined in Dark Cellar Cell
From Denver’s United Labor Bulletin of March 28, 1914:
Note: Mother was arrested at Walsenburg by the Colorado militia on Monday March 23rd, at about 5:30 a. m. She has been confined, since that time, in the same dark cold cellar cell that was the cause of the death of striking miner Kostas Marcos.
—————
From The Masses of February 1914: Mother Jones by Art Young
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday March 10, 1914 “Why, Governor Ammons?” by Mrs. Lizabeth A. Williams
From the Denver United Labor Bulletin of March 7, 1914:
WHY, GOVERNOR AMMONS? -by Mrs. Lizabeth A. Williams
Oh, what has become of your once fair name, That is doomed to die in disgrace and shame, Governor Ammons? Why cease the whir of our industry’s wheel, Why end the output of iron and steel, Why call for arms, so that labor should kneel, Governor Ammons?
[…..]
Your victims are tortured, hungry and cold, Truth has been crushed, our rights have been sold, Governor Ammons. A white-haired mother, in her eighty-one, Long a victim of your bayonet and gun, What would your soul do if you were her son, Governor Ammons?
Your reign of injustice will soon be o’er, Your cossacks will ride on their raids no more, Governor Ammons. Our martyred ballots took our rights away, Your blood-stained power we have felt each day, Before the Judge of All what will you say, Governor Ammons?
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday May 5, 1920
Centralia, Washington – The Story of Blind Tom Lassiter
From The Butte Daily Bulletin of April 28, 1920:
BLIND NEWSBOY VICTIM SECOND CENTRALIA MOB
—–
Because Tom Lassiter Sold Union Records and Butte Bulletins
Super-Patriots of Lumber Town Maltreated Him.
—–
(By JOHN NICHOLAS BEFFEL.) (Staff Correspondent, the Federated Press.)
Centralia, Wash., (By Mail).-It was the second of the three Centralia mobs that got Blind Tom Lassiter, newsboy.His crime was that he sold the Seattle Union Record, workers’ newspaper, and was a wobbly. Twice the mob burned all his possessions, then kidnaped him on the open street, and sped with him to another county.
Gov. Louis F. Hart knows the facts of this flagrant case. They were presented to him, substantiated by affidavits of reputable eye-witnesses. But the men who abused and exiled Lassiter, a law-abiding American citizen, have never been prosecuted.
Prosecuting Attorney Herman Allen of Lewis county knows the facts. They were presented to him with similar affidavits. But Allen has never taken any steps to punish the guilty men.
Judge John M. Wilson, who tried the ten I. W. W. in the Centralia labor case at Montesano, knows the facts about the Lassiter episode. They were offered to him in detail by Defense Counsel George F. Vanderveer. Those facts ought, by every tenet of justice, have been given to the jury. But the court said no.
So the story of what happened to Blind Tom Lassiter is little known outside of Centralia. Mention of it crept occasionally into the news stories published in perhaps four newspapers across the country; but its real significance needs to be made clear.
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday April 28, 1920
Chehalis, Washington – Mike Sheehan and Elmer Smith Back Behind Bars
From The Butte Daily Bulletin of April 23, 1920:
CHEHALIS JAILOR CHARY ABOUT RECEIVING VISITS
———-
Correspondent Tells of Conditions in Prison Where
Victims of Centralia Lumber Barons Were Confined
—–
(By John Nicholas Beffel.)
Centralia, Wash.-It’s difficult to get into the decrepit old jail at Chehalis unless you are a Wobbly. I wanted to get inside, but Sheriff John Berry wouldn’t let me. He was firm about it, and a bit peevish. Sanitary conditions within were a delicate subject, a cause for official sensitiveness.
That jail has an important relation to the Centralia tragedy story. Some of the I. W. W. defendants consented to make statements while confined there. Mrs. Mary McAllister, one of the vital witnesses for the defense, who testified that Eugene Barnett was in the Roderick hotel during the rioting and not in the Avalon hotel, was held in the Chehalis jail twenty days without warrant or charge, and then released.
And now Mike Sheehan and Elmer Smith, acquitted at Montesano, were back at Chehalis, imprisoned in a little cell, suffering for lack of proper ventilation, fighting live rats and enduring the odor of dead ones. Sheehan and Smith had been found innocent of connection with the death of Warren O. Grim, and then were immediately rearrested charged with conspiring to murder Arthur McElfresh, another slain Armistice Day parader.
I asked Sheriff Berry if I could see the interior of the jail.
“Who are you investigatin’ jails for?” he demanded suspiciously.
“For the labor press,” I said.
“It won’t be necessary for you to see the inside of this jail,” he decreed. “It ain’t the kind of place it ought to be, but I can’t help that. I’ve tried to get the county commissioners to fix things, but they won’t loosen up.”
Already I knew that Berry would not permit the prisoners to receive any copies of the Seattle Union Record or any other labor paper.
Hellraisers Journal – Monday December 15, 1919
Seattle, Washington – Union Record Editor and Staff Arrested
From The Nation of December 13, 1919:
A Newspaper Confiscated—And Returned
By ANNA LOUISE STRONG
[Part II of II.]
Spokane Spokesman-Review November 15, 1919
Meantime [as more facts came to light concerning the Centralia outrage] The Record had been seized. Two hours before the seizure the other competing newspapers knew of it, and proclaimed it on the streets. Reporters, camera men, and moving-picture men accompanied the deputies. The editor, and the president and secretary of the board of trustees, were arrested and later released on bail. The employees were cleared out of the building which was then searched. Much material was carted away. The seizure occurred while the presses were turning out the regular home edition, and their work was stopped. The staff was told, rather vaguely, that the place was closed. Later in the evening the proprietors again obtained possession of the plant, with the assurance that there was no intention of holding it. However, on the following day, when the main edition was on the press, the marshal again arrived, stated that the plant was indefinitely closed, and gave the employees half an hour to clear out. The first act of one of the deputies was to take down the telephone, call up a competing newspaper, and announce “We’ve shut her down tight.”
—————
—————
—————
—————
—————
—————
—————
———-
———-
