Tag: Socialist Party of America

Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Arrested; Holly Grove Captured and All the Men of the Town Taken into Custody by Militia

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones Buy Guns, Ptt Pst p1, Feb 14, 1913—————

Hellraisers Journal – Monday February 17, 1913
Charleston, West Virginia – Mother Jones, Editor Boswell, and Organizers Arrested

From The Pittsburgh Post of February 14, 1913:

“MOTHER” JONES ARRESTED;
MINE TOWN CAPTURED
———-
Socialists Charged With Inciting Rioting;
Militia Surrounds Miners’ Village.
———-

RIOT CALL AT CAPITOL
———-

(SPECIAL TO THE POST.)

Mother Jones, Tacoma Tx p3, Feb 14, 1912

CHARLESTON, W. Va., Feb. 13.-The arrest of “Mother” Jones, famous agitator; C. H. Boswell, editor of a Socialist paper in this city; Paul J. Paulson [Paulsen], of the international organization of the United Mine Workers of America; Frank Bartley [Charles Batley], a Socialist leader, and others here today, brought rapid developments in the Paint Creek strike situation.

“Mother” Jones and her associates are charged with conspiracy and as accessories before the fact in the death of Fred Bobbett, bookkeeper of the Paint Creek Colliery Company in Mucklow. “Mother” Jones, in a speech in Boomer last night is alleged to have urged the miners to come to Charleston today and “take” the capital. She was arrested this afternoon on one of a number of warrants issued, and with her associates will be taken before the military commission.

“Mother Jones” is reported as having said:

Buy guns, and buy good ones; have them where you can lay your hands on them at any minute. I will tell you when and where to use them.

Mother Jones, it is reported, held a meeting in Longacre, two miles below Boomer, at 10 o’clock this morning, and urged striking union miners to refuse to heed orders of the union president to return to work.

A rumor that miners were coming here to take the State capitol caused a sensation. When some miners and citizens began to gather a riot call was sent in from the capitol building, and the local police under Chief Albert Guill rushed to the State house. The streets about the building were crowded with people, most of whom, however, were drawn there by the riot call.

CAPTURE WHOLE VILLAGE.

Detachments from the troops stationed in the strike zone this morning surrounded the village of Holly Grove, which has been the hotbed of trouble makers since the strike broke out, and captured 68 men. With the men a large quantity of arms and ammunition was also taken. Every man in the little town, which is composed of tents and huts, was taken into custody. The women and children were not disturbed.

According to the military officials commanding in the strike zone, all the rioting and attacks made on troops and workmen have had their inception in Holly Grove. It was from this rendezvous that the strikers were wont to sally forth in parties and fire on the guards and others, in the Paint Creek valley. At the time the raid and arrests were made the population of Holly Grove was far below normal. Ordinarily there are several hundred strikers in the little town.

The 68 men arrested were taken to Paint Creek Junction and placed under a strong guard. With the 60 men who had been arrested previously and taken to Paint Creek Junction, today’s arrests swell the number in custody of the militia officials at that point to 128 men.

EXPECT TO CONVICT RIOTERS.

The militia admit they may not be able to prove that all the prisoners were implicated in the disorders in the Paint Creek region, but that they will be able to connect many of the suspects with the outrages, they say they have no doubt.

According to the civil authorities, who were in charge in Mucklow during the battle fought at that point last Monday night, the men implicated came from Holly Grove, and after the trouble had quieted down, returned to the little village and hid their arms.

The military authorities have not been able to get a copy of the proclamation issued by the miners in the Smithers Creek district, which declared they would “tear the heart of the sheriff, kill the governor and wipe the militia off the map,” although it is said that copies of these proclamations were posted in many conspicuous places throughout the district. Especially were copies of the notice freely distributed throughout the district where the foreign population is in the majority.

Four additional companies of militia were ordered to the strike district to-night by Governor Glasscock. Two are from Parkersburg, and one each from Morgantown and Sutton. Six companies are now in the field.

SAYS DEATH LIST IS 28.

HUNTINGTON, W. Va., Feb. 13.-That the death list in the Cabin Creek riot will total 26 instead of 16, is the statement of W. O. Robbett [Bobbitt], a mine superintendent, who brought his brother, Bob Robbett [Fred Bobbitt] who was killed in the riot, to this city for burial. Mr. Robbett [Bobbitt] made the positive statement that there were 24 miners and two mine guards, one of whom was his brother, a volunteer, killed.

[Photograph and emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for January 1903, Part II: Speaks at Convention of United Mine Workers, Meets with Socialists

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, God s Cause, Scranton Tb p1, Aug 7, 1902—————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday February 15, 1903
Mother Jones News Round-Up for January 1903, Part II
-Speaks at Miners’ Convention, Meets with Socialists

From The Indianapolis Journal of January 22, 1903:

TRIP LIGHT FANTASTIC
———-

MINERS’ DELEGATES ATTEND BALL
AT TOMLINSON HALL.
———-
Early Adjournment of the Convention
in Order that the Auditorium
Could Be Cleared.
———-

MOTHER JONES MAKES SPEECH
———-

[…..]

Mother Jones, Socialist Spirit p19, Aug 1902

The dance of the Indianapolis garment workers in Tomlinson Hall last night interfered with the session of the mine workers’ convention that was to have been held during the afternoon. In order that the Janitors might prepare the floor of the hall for the dance the convention adjourned at noon until 9 o’clock this morning, after a motion to omit the afternoon session had carried.

The morning session was a busy one during the earlier hours, but toward noon had resolved itself into speech-making. Mother Jones, the woman friend of the miners, who was enjoined by Judge Jackson’s order prohibiting inflammatory speeches in the coal-mining district, was called on for an address. Her speech was typical of the woman and socialistic in tone. Her recommendation to the miners was that they use their votes as citizens to change conditions In the trade. Mother Jones was pessimistic in her views on the possibility of friendly relations between capital and labor. She thinks there is such a gulf between the two classes that it can never be bridged except by a change in government. The miners could adjust the conditions by their vote, she said, if they voted right. Now miners in America are existing as miserably as the serfs in Russia, and will continue so until all of the changes are made in the government which she suggests, she insinuated in her speech…..

[Photograph added.]

From The Indianapolis News of January 22, 1903:

SOCIALISM’S VOICE IN MINERS CONVENTION
———-

EXPRESSION ON GOVERNMENT
OWNERSHIP WANTED.
———-

INITIATIVE AND REFERENDUM
———-
Miners Voted Unanimously Not to
Incorporate Their Organization
-Question of Co-Operative Stores
———-

At the opening of the United Workers’ convention this morning, there was the first clash of the year between the conservatives and the Socialistic factions. It originated in a resolution from an obscure local union, favoring an expression of Government ownership of coal mines and railroads.

A motion on the part of the conservatives to table it brought on a long discussion, and many leaders of the two factions were heard.

The socialistic faction based its arguments on the anthracite strike and the combination of coal companies and railroads and that a tendency not to treat with miners “according to the laws of man or God” made it necessary for the Government to take some such action.

Delegate Walker, of Illinois, in a long speech, said that the coal companies and railroads were now in a combination injurious to the interests of the people, and were holding back coal to boost prices.

Delegate Lusk, of West Virginia, also charged heartless attitude of coal operators and railroads not only to the miners, but to the people.

The controversy was finally ended for the time, on a motion of Chris Evans, of Ohio, to refer the matter back to the committee.

[…..]

William R. Fairley, executive committeeman for the Alabama district, in a speech of some length, laid before the convention a grievance of the Alabama miners on the speech made yesterday by Mother Jones, in which, he claimed, she held them responsible for the appalling child labor conditions in Alabama. Mother Jones made a reply in which she said she did not hold the miners responsible only in so far as they cast votes for and elected members of agricultural classes to the Legislature, who permitted the infants to be worked and murdered by mill and mine owners. She ripped the State of Alabama up and down. At the close of the discussion Patrick Dolan, president of the Pittsburg district, moved that Fairley and Mother Jones kiss and make up. There was a great deal of laughter but no vote was taken…..

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for January 1903, Part II: Speaks at Convention of United Mine Workers, Meets with Socialists” →

Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: “The New York Garment Workers” by Mary E. Marcy, Part III

Janet RayeBread and Roses Strike of 1912
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Rose Schneiderman Quote, Stand Together to Resist Mar 20, NY Independent p938, Apr 1905—————

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday February 5, 1913
New York, New York – The Garment Strike by Mary Marcy, Photos by Paul Thompson

From the International Socialist Review of February 1913:

THE NEW YORK GARMENT WORKERS
By MARY E. MARCY

Photographs by Paul Thompson, New York.

[Part III of III]

NY Garment Workers, Type of Striker, ISR p586, Feb 1913

Unlike the Lawrence strike, the strike of the New York garment workers is from the top DOWN; that is the union officials ordered the strike and have held the reins in their hands ever since. Without doubt they are trying to serve the strikers, but it is our opinion that they would build more permanently in permitting the strikers themselves to have the deciding voice in their own affairs; in teaching them self-reliance and class solidarity.

But the workers are finding out many things for themselves. They are thrilling with a new sense of power; they are learning the joy that comes when workers of whatever race or creed fight side by side in a great class struggle. The hope of victory and achievement is in the air and it is doubtful whether they will obey any orders from the union officials if their employers do not grant them appreciable benefits.

The heart of every true Socialist is with the strikers in this fight. We believe that the strike is a valuable form of direct action that teaches working class self-reliance and solidarity better than anything else. It teaches the workers to conduct their own fights. It brings out the class character of all existing social institutions. It teaches above all things, the necessity of revolutionary class unionism.

TEXT NY Garment Workers, Victory for 20 th Waist Makers, ISR 588, Feb 1913

—————

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: “The New York Garment Workers” by Mary E. Marcy, Part III” →

Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: “The New York Garment Workers” by Mary E. Marcy, Part II

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Rose Schneiderman Quote, Stand Together to Resist Mar 20, NY Independent p938, Apr 1905—————

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday February 4, 1913
New York, New York – The Garment Strike by Mary Marcy, Photos by Paul Thompson

From the International Socialist Review of February 1913:

THE NEW YORK GARMENT WORKERS
By MARY E. MARCY

Photographs by Paul Thompson, New York.

[Part II of III]

NY Garment Workers, White Goods Strikers, ISR p585, Feb 1913

The thugs employed by the shop bosses have proved very energetic and reliable. They have worked early and late beating up strikers whenever possible, starting trouble and blaming it on the workers, while the police stood by (or took a hand) to see that nobody attacked or injured them.

During the first week in January the union officials conferred with the employers relative to a settlement of the strike, but the New York Call reports that all negotiations were broken off when the employers insisted upon a return of the strikers to the shops pending an investigation of the conditions in the trade by a special commission to be appointed for that purpose. The union officials declared that under no circumstances would “they order the men to return to work” pending an investigation or arbitration of their demands.

As the pickets began to suffer at the hands of the company guards, it was decided to take a lesson from the strikers at Lawrence, Mass., and chain picketing was employed for the first time in New York City.

Ten thousand pickets were asked to report each day, starting to work on the “Chain Picket Line” at 5 :00 o’clock in the morning, to pass constantly in a steady stream of pedestrians before the strikebound shops.

On the day of the inauguration of the Chain Picket plan, the unions held various meetings which were well attended by the strikers. Hugh Frayne urged a general strike in every branch of the needle and garment industries, promising the support of the A. F. of L. while Abe Cahan closed one meeting begging the strikers to be true to the American Federation of Labor. He urged them to carry an A. F. of L. card in one pocket and a Socialist party card in the other (that is to work for class organization on one side and craft division on the other.)

This is very different from the calls of the Industrialists, all of whom insist upon a CLASS UNION card on the industrial field and a Socialist party card to represent their class interests upon the political field.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: “The New York Garment Workers” by Mary E. Marcy, Part II” →

Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: “The New York Garment Workers” by Mary E. Marcy, Part I

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Rose Schneiderman Quote, Stand Together to Resist Mar 20, NY Independent p938, Apr 1905—————

Hellraisers Journal – Monday February 3, 1913
New York, New York – The Garment Strike by Mary Marcy, Photos by Paul Thompson

From the International Socialist Review of February 1913:

HdLn NY Garment Workers by M Marcy, CRTN Walker Solidarity Hand, ISR p583, Feb 1913

[Part I of III]

A WALKOUT which may yet involve every garment worker in the nation, was started in New York City, December 30th, when scores of thousands of men and women employed in the garment industries responded to the call issued by the United Garment Workers of America and deserted the shops and benches where they had toiled for years.

The response to the strike call was so great that the union officials declared the union was a great deal stronger than they had believed. One thousand five hundred volunteer red scouts, who were picked to carry the official strike declaration, were on the job at 4:00 o’clock in the morning ready to start out with bundles of strike orders to be distributed in all sections of the Lower East Side. Before night over 100,000 men, women and children had taken their working paraphernalia home to begin the good fight.

The garment workers are striking for:

The abolition of the subcontracting system.
The abolition of foot power.
That no work be given out to be done in tenement houses.
Overtime to be paid for at the rate of time and one half, double time for holidays.
A forty-eight hour work week.
A general wage increase of 20 per cent for all the workers in the garment industry.

The following scale of wages:
Operators-First class, sewing around coats, sewing in sleeves, and pocket makers, $25 per week; second class, lining makers, closers and coat stitchers, $22; third class, sleeve makers and all other machine workers, $16.
Tailors-First class, shapers, underbasters and fitters, $24; second class, edge basters, canvas basters, collar makers, lining basters and bushelers, $21; third class, armhole basters, sleeve makers, and all other tailoring, $17.
Pressers-Bushel pressers, $24; regular pressers, second class, $24; underpressers and edge pressers, $18.
Women and Child Workers-Button sewers and bushel hands, $12; hand buttonhole makers, first class, 3½ cents; second class, sack coats, 2½ cents; feller hands, not less than $10 a week.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: “The New York Garment Workers” by Mary E. Marcy, Part I” →

Hellraisers Journal: From The Coming Nation: Theresa Malkiel on the New York Garment Workers Strike, Part III

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote T Malkiel, Sisters Arise, Sc Woman p10, July 1908—————

Hellraisers Journal – Monday January 27, 1913
New York, New York – Theresa Malkiel on Suffering of Garment Workers

From The Coming Nation of January 25, 1913:

Striking for the Right to Live

-by Theresa Malkiel

[Part II of III]

Worker Carrying Garments to Finish, Cmg Ntn p7, Jan 25, 1913

The clothing workers have suffered and starved, and, it must be admitted, tried to improve their condition by frequent strikes and attempts at organization. But their organizations, even as their strikes bore local character. One part of the trade, or one branch, or subdivision would go out on the warpath, but its struggle was doomed from the start, for the rest of the industry continued its work as if nothing had happened.

The German hated the Jew, the Jew the Italian, who is trying to wrench the trade from him, the Italian despised the Russian, the Russian the American, the cutter looked down upon the operator, the operator exploited the finisher, the finisher the helper, and while this was going on the employers exploited them all to their heart’s content.

The United Garment Workers of America, though considered the mother body of the clothing trade occupied themselves chiefly with one branch the overall-making, which is mostly in the hands of American women, and paid but little attention to the woes and sorrows of the tailors, perhaps, because the latter was considered beyond redemption.

Thus have men, women and children slaved for over seventy-five years. Thus have thousands upon thousands gone to their early graves, victims of consumption, heart disease, malnutrition, insanity. The man in charge of the claim department of the Workingman’s Circle, most of whose members are garment workers, told the writer that nine-tenths of their members died before they reached the age of forty.

And with the tailors the general public suffered. Unsanitary work-rooms, sweat-shop labor means infection of the garments, and eventually of the public who wear them. Our coats and suits were and still are made in places where smallpox, scarlet fever, diphtheria, measles, consumption and numerous other contagious diseases make great inroads. Our garments are made by workers themselves afflicted with disease, as a matter of fact, the workers in the sweat-shops and tenements not only work on the garments we wear, but often use them to sleep on or to cover themselves with.

Thus have ninety-two million people all over the country been subject to disease and contagion carried to them in their garments from Baltimore, Philadelphia, Chicago, Rochester and New York. For these cities produce 70 per cent of the entire output of man’s and children’s clothing, while New York alone produces one-third of the entire output.

New York was always the largest center in the clothing industry. The city has the natural advantages for production of all grades of clothing. Here, too, a large body of tailors land from Europe, and for the most part remain. The tailors form the nucleus for the better grades of work, while the hundreds of thousands of immigrants landing here yearly enable the employers to obtain cheap labor for the lower grade of garments.

The 125,000 striking garment workers think and say that their strike should be the concern of the entire nation. That their demand for the abolition of the sweat-shop and the subcontracting system should meet the endorsement of every thinking man and woman.

As a matter of fact, even the capitalist press, always ready to slur labor and denounce strikes has exhibited a more human attitude in this strike. It has gone even so far as to express its approval of the abolition of the sweatshop, this perhaps, not because it loves the garment workers so much, but that it wants to protect the general public more.

Then again the sudden display of solidarity has almost taken our newspaper men off their feet. And how wonderful this display is at present can be fully appreciated by an eye witness only. From the highest to the lowest, the few Americans as well as the great body of foreigners, the bulk of Jewish men even as the Italian women stand out for the recognition of their union, for the joint settlement with all branches

“When did the tailor learn this class solidarity? How did he come by it?” ask our upholders of the present regime. They know not, or don’t care to know that the world moved a bit of late, that the progress of evolution, the age of industrialism has advanced the cause of the working class. That the workers are not only firmly-planted on the economic field, but that they have a great political party, the Socialist party, that they have a great press in almost all languages represented in the tailoring industry, the Socialist press.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From The Coming Nation: Theresa Malkiel on the New York Garment Workers Strike, Part III” →

Hellraisers Journal: From The Coming Nation: Theresa Malkiel on the New York Garment Workers Strike, Part II

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote T Malkiel, Sisters Arise, Sc Woman p10, July 1908—————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday January 26, 1913
New York, New York – Theresa Malkiel Observes Ten Thousand Pickets

From The Coming Nation of January 25, 1913:

Striking for the Right to Live

-by Theresa Malkiel

[Part II of III]

NY Loft Shop Garment Workers, Cmg Ntn p7, Jan 25, 1913

Ten Thousand Pickets

A tumult, a commotion, a shout and I found myself eagerly peering out of the window; many heads pressed close about and in back of me. They were coming from the field work, the pickets I mean. Not two, not ten, not a hundred, but 10,000 strong, an army of labor, a city in itself.

My God! how powerful they looked. Every stone in the street pavements, every brick of the dark grim tenements seemed to have spoken to me of it. I was moved to tears of joy. I felt like a long-lost traveler who had at last found the right road. Now I knew it. There is where the true power, the road to freedom, was to be found in the combination and solidarity of labor.

These ten thousand tailor pickets were a power that even New York could not combat. It would take the entire police force to fight them man to man, or rather man to woman, for the women are really the greater fighters, the most determined pickets of the two.

Out of the picket line came an Italian woman, a mother of six children. She was beaten up by the police while watching her shop with a few others. The brutal thugs in police uniform knocked her about, bruised her face, disheveled her hair, tore her clothes off her back and Lord knows what else they might have done to her had she not been rescued by the army of 10,000.

Thus is the working class mother treated by our capitalist government, for no other crime than the earnest desire to earn an honest living for her children.

She took it calmly, stoically, as they all take it, the true Roman matrons that they are. “It’s all for my childs,” she said. “I fight them again. I no care.”

And still the picket line marched onward like a threatening cloud from above. They feared nothing, not even the elements. Occasionally one would fall out of their midst for the same reasons as the Italian woman came out of the picket line, but the men, like the women, took the medicine dealt out to them by the police and thugs like good fellows.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From The Coming Nation: Theresa Malkiel on the New York Garment Workers Strike, Part II” →

Hellraisers Journal: From The Coming Nation: Theresa Malkiel on the New York Garment Workers Strike, Part I

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote T Malkiel, Sisters Arise, Sc Woman p10, July 1908—————

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday January 25, 1913
New York, New York – Theresa Malkiel on the Scene with Striking Garment Workers

From The Coming Nation of January 25, 1913:

Striking for the Right to Live

-by Theresa Malkiel

[Part I of III]

New York Garment Worker, Cmg Ntn p2, Jan 25, 1913

GRANDMOTHER! what are you doing here?” I asked of an old, old Italian woman who came up panting to the fourth floor of Clinton Hall. She turned around, looked me over with her black, penetrating eyes, which in spite of her age had not lost their luster and said:

“Me striker. Who you are?” I showed her my speaker’s card issued by the joint committee of the Socialist party and the United Hebrew Trades and she nodded her head in approval. I told her I was anxious to hear the story of the strike from the lips of the workers themselves.

“Me no speak much English,” she replied, “but me tella you just what me feel.” 

She pulled up her gray, worn shawl which had slid down from her bent shoulders, smoothed her snow-white hair and slowly in broken English told me her tale of woe and suffering.

As she talked on I observed her closely and wondered what had kept up the fire and activity in that aged body, perhaps her very sorrow and unbelievable struggle for existence, for the revelations made by these aged lips sent a chill through me, filled my heart with horror. I knew that her case was not singular, that her condition was characteristic of the condition of all of her sisters in the trade and they constitute 60 per cent of the entire number of 15,000 women workers in men’s and children’s clothing industry.

She told me of twenty long years spent in the clothing workshops where the air is constantly surcharged with the foulest odors and laden with disease germs, she complained of the lack of sunlight of which she had so much in her own land. Here she had to spend her days working by artificial light. She complained of the long hours when work was plentiful, of the dread of slack time, of the small wages at best. 

A bread winner for her own children in her younger days, when she first came to this country, she was now supporting two grand-children whose mother fell a victim to the ravages of consumption. Consumption invaded the old Italian woman’s family, as it had invaded the families of most of the clothing workers, carrying them off in the prime of life. The old woman was exceptionally strong, and she and the two small children she was supporting were the only survivors of the whole family.

These children, who are the apple of her eye, she keeps in a two-room flat of a rear eight-story tenement house located on East Houston street, the district where most of the clothing workers lived in order to be near their workshops, and where the population is recorded to be 1,108 to every acre. She pays $8 a month for rent and keeps two boarders to help pay it.

Strike for Love of Grandchildren

This woman who lacks only five years to the allotted three score and ten must finish 20 pair of pants, that is, sew on the lining, serge the seams, finish up the legs, sew on buttons and tack the buttonholes in order to make a dollar a day; $6 a week is the highest she ever makes in season. The season in the clothing industry lasts from March to June and from September to December. The old woman is no exception, to the rule, $6 per week, in fact, is above the average, many make less and very few more. They have no regular hours, but work as long as there is work, sometimes twelve, and fourteen hours a day.

It was not herself that the old Italian woman considered so much, as her poor orphan grand-children who had to take up the trade where she would leave it off.

“Why me strike you ask?” all the venom of the years of sorrow and wretchedness, all the bitter memory of her sacrificed children, cried out in her voice of defiance. 

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From The Coming Nation: Theresa Malkiel on the New York Garment Workers Strike, Part I” →

Hellraisers Journal: From Solidarity: Children of Little Falls Textile Strikers Return from Care of Schenectady Socialists

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Telegram re Little Falls NY Strike Settle, Sol p1, Jan 11, 1913
-from Solidarity of January 11, 1913
—————

Hellraisers Journal – Monday January 20, 1913
Little Falls, New York – Strikers’ Children Return from Schenectady

From Solidarity of January 18, 1913:

Return of Little Falls Children, Sol p1, Jan 18, 1913

From Solidarity of January 4, 1913:

Little Falls Strikers Children Arrive at Schenectady, Sol p1, Jan 4, 1913

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From Solidarity: Children of Little Falls Textile Strikers Return from Care of Schenectady Socialists” →

Hellraisers Journal: Mass Protest Meeting Held in Wheeling; Mother Jones Speaks on Behalf of Striking West Virginia Miners

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Fred Mooney re Mother Jones at Cabin Creek Aug 6, 1912, Ab p27—————

Hellraisers Journal – Friday January 10, 1913
Wheeling, West Virginia – Mother Jones Speaks at Mass Protest Meeting

From The Wheeling Majority of January 9, 1913:

Protest Meeting Well Attended
———-

Mass Meeting Scheduled for Sunday w Mother Jones, Wlg Maj p1, Jan 2, 1913
The Wheeling Majority
January 2, 1913

The mass meeting held last Sunday afternoon to protest against the conditions being inflicted upon the striking miners of this state by heartless coal barons, and to insist upon a federal investigation of the coal mine industry in West Virginia was a great success. The Victoria theatre was crowded long before the hour for opening the meeting had arrived, and close attention was paid to the teaches and great interest shown on the part of the audience—an interest which proves that the working class is awakening to its own desires and that the days of inhuman exploitation in the coal mines of this state are numbered.

The meeting was held under the auspices of the Ohio Valley Trades & Labor Assembly, in behalf of the United Mine Workers of America, and T. J. Hecker, of the Assembly, called the meeting to order and introduced Harry P. Corcoran as chairman.

H. P. Corcoran Chairman.

Mr. Corcoran made a brief talk, explaining that the meeting was non-political and non-sectarian, and that it was held in the attempt to arouse public sentiment to demand a federal investigation of conditions in the West Virginia coal fields, and the passage of remedial legislation by the present legislature.

Marco Roman.

He introduced Marco Roman, international organizer of the United Mine Workers, who spoke briefly in Italian, giving a history of the present conflict.

Attorney Houston Speaks.

H. W. Houston, attorney for the Mine Workers, followed, stating that he was making an appeal from the supreme court of the state to the “Court of last resort—the people.” He reviewed the granting of political concessions in governments from the Magna Charta almost 700 years ago, and said that all these concessions would now be worthless until we abolished industrial slavery. Modern government, he said makes workers be good while it robs them. Courts are daily twisting old decisions in order to keep the workers in subjection. He cited the Hatters’ case, the Iron Workers case, and the Ohio county case where, before Judge Nesbitt, it was held that when workers combine and keep another fellow out, they must respond in damages, but when he asked if employers could be held if they combined to discharge men in malice and blacklist them he received no answer.

He said that Governor Glasscock established martial law while the courts were open, which is a violation of the state constitution. Then there were no jury trials, and no chance to cross examine witnesses. All the criminals of the state, he said, had never violated the basic law of the state as had Governor Glasscock. The military authorities used the words of Wellington to justify their deeds: “That martial law was the will of one man.”

The miner Nance [Silas Frank Nantz], whose case the supreme court refused to dismiss, was always an aggressive fighter for unionism and because of that he was arrested without warrant by the military authorities for an alleged offense committed eight days before martial law was established, and, although the penalty in law for the offense provided a maximum punishment of but one year in jail or $500 fine, he was sentenced to five years in the penitentiary. He quoted the opinion of the U. S. Supreme court in the case of Nance was not unanimous, even Judge Ira E. Robinson dissenting, saying: “I stand for constitutional law.” Attorney General Conley, also, refused to stultify himself by defending the state’s unwarranted action before the court.

Mother Jones.

“Mother” Jones was next introduced and spoke for nearly an hour in her accustomed vigorous style. She recited with much detail the horrors of the situation throughout the strike region. She stated that this fight had begun twelve years ago and told of the first meeting ever held. Contrary to general opinion, she said, she had not been in jail often, but had had that honor only once, when Judge Jackson put her in jail at Parkersburg.

When she came to West Virginia she had been working for the shop men on the Harriman lines, then on strike, and she came down to help the boys she knew. When she got here they told her that a stone wall was the dividing line in the Cabin Creek region and that no organizer was allowed behind the wall. She replied that no wall had ever been built by capitalist robbers high enough to keep her out and she proceeded to go in. And she had been in ever since, except when she came out, as she was out now, to tell the people of this state and country about the conditions that existed behind that wall.

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