Hellraisers Journal – Friday March 8, 1912 Children of Lawrence Strikers Appear before House Committee at Washington
From The Washington Times of March 2, 1912:
[Inset: Miss Tema Camitta, Philadelphia Sunday School Teacher.]
From the Washington Evening Star of March 2, 1912:
Child Tells Her Story.
There was Camello [Camella] Teoli, a little Italian girl, who stood up when she was told and who said she was sixteen years old, although she didn’t look it. She started to work in the spinning room of one of the American Woolen Company’s mills in Lawrence two years ago and three weeks later had her hair caught in a shafting and her scalp torn off, just as did Miss Houghton, at the census office, more than twelve months ago. But little Camello Teoli was the oldest of seven children and, with her father, the support of the family.
She earned several dollars a week when “speeded up,” and her father, when he was lucky, made seven. She is still under treatment as a result of the horrible accident of which she was a victim, but lately has been working just the same, she said, for her father has been on “slack time” and has been making $2.80 a week.
There were other children there, too, who, while they showed no scars, looked even to the untrained eye as if they had been “speeded up” beyond the limit of juvenile endurance.
Cheeks sallow, lips pinched and eyes that seemed to have looked upon all the misery of the world, the children sat unmoved throughout the hearing, presented by Mr. Berger as an exhibit of what “one of the most highly protected industries in America does to the human life by which it is served,” as he declared.
The children, with several adult strikers as guardians, and accompanied byGeorge W. Roewer, the Boston attorney, who has defended in court the strikers arrested in Lawrence, reached Washington last night several hours behind schedule time, and were met at the Union station were escorted to the accommodations that had been provided for them by a big crowd of local socialists and labor sympathizers. All of the Lawrence delegation wore little cards, bearing the inscription “Don’t be a scab,” and although weary from their journey, marched to their lower Pennsylvania avenue hotel singing and cheering.
Today they marched to the Capitol in the same way, and outside of the House building had to run the fire of a battery of cameras and moving picture machines stationed right outside of the entrance.
[Note: Camella Teoli was introduced to the Committee on March 2nd. She made her full statement before the Committee on March 4th.]
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday July 19, 1910
Mother Jones News Round-Up for June 1910, Part III:
-Interviewed by Selene Armstrong in Washington, D. C.
From The Washington Times of June 18, 1910:
Thus spoke Mother Jones, the plucky little white-haired woman, whose home, to use her own words, is “wherever there’s a labor war, and the President of the United States, when she had journeyed across half a continent to lay before him for the first time the cases of a number of political refugees in prison in Arizona, Kansas, and other Western States.
Today and on other days this week, Mother Jones has been busy at the Capitol, where it said that members of certain committees before which she has appeared have gasped for breath and begged for mercy before she had finished outlining to them their duties in regard to the Mexicans whose freedom she seeks from the Government.
Meets Old Friends.
She has hobnobbed with her old friends Representatives Wilson and Nicholls of Pennsylvania, and has made new friends of many other statesmen, who, however little they sympathize with her decided views on this or that public question, cannot harden their hearts against the cheery good humor and keen wit which radiate from her.
When asked by Chairman Dalzell of the Rules Committee of the House, before which she has appeared this week, to state her place of residence, Mother Jones replied:
My home is wherever there a labor war, sir.
The life story of this little woman with the snow white hair, the childlike blue eyes, and the look of perennial youthfulness on her face, would, if it were written, be the history of the of cause of organized labor. For thirty years she has traveled throughout the length and breath of the land in order to stand by the workers in time of stress. In the roughest mining camps of the West, and in the crowded tenement districts of eastern cities, she has brought to the women of the working class a woman’s gentle counsel, and to the men sagacity and keen judgement the equal of a man’s.
Hellraisers Journal – Monday July 18, 1910
Mother Jones News Round-Up for June 1910, Part II:
-Found in Washington, D. C., Testifying Before House Committee
From the San Francisco Call of June 15, 1910:
“MOTHER” JONES DENOUNCES DIAZ
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Mexican Refugees Persecuted by American Officers,
She Tells House Committee
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Writer Declares Los Angeles Detectives Open
Private Letters in Postoffice
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WASHINGTON, June 14.—”Mother” Jones addressed the rules committee of the house today in behalf of the Mexican refugees, who, it is alleged, are being persecuted in the United States through the agencies of American officers and Mexican government “spies.”
Mrs. Jones related that while she was in Douglas, Ariz., addressing a meeting, of “the unorganized slaves who work in the smelters,” she witnessed the kidnaping of a Mexican refugee, who, she said, was seized, strangled, thrown into an automobile and carried across the line into Mexico.
“Mother” Jones” denounced President Diaz of Mexico for sending “his hirelings across the border to crush the constitution of our country.”
John Kenneth Turner, a magazine writer, and John Murray, a newspaper writer, continued their testimony. The offering of evidence was finished today and the committee will decide within a few days whether an investigation by congress shall be recommended.
Murray testified to the opening of his own mail and that of a large number of other persons by the American authorities.
Turner said he had discovered city detectives in the Los Angeles postoffice examining the mail of Mexican residents there. He also told of the suppression by the authorities of many small newspapers published by Mexican refugees in various cities in Texas, California and Arizona.
Hellraisers Journal – Friday June 17, 1910
Washington D. C. – Mother Jones Before House Rules Committee, Part I
Washington D. C., June 14, 1910-During the morning session of the Hearings before the House Rules Committee on H.J. Res. 201, “Providing for a Joint Committee To Investigate Alleged Persecutions of Mexican Citizens by the Government of Mexico,” Mother Jones was called to the stand by Congressman William B. Wilson of Pennsylvania. Mother testified as follow:
Mr. Wilson: Mr. Chairman, I would like to have Mother Jones speak. The Chairman [Representative John Dalzell of Pennsylvania]:
Mother Jones, please give the stenographer your name and residence.
STATEMENT OF MRS. MARY JONES
[Part I of II.]
Lebanon Daily News June 15, 1910
[Questioned by Chairman Dalzell:]
My name is Mary Jones. I live in the United States, but I do not know exactly in what place, because I am always in the fight against oppression, and wherever a fight is going on I have to jump there, and sometimes I am in Washington, sometimes in Pennsylvania, sometimes in Arizona, sometimes in Texas, and sometimes up in Minnesota, so that really I have no particular residence…No abiding place, but wherever a fight is on against wrong, I am always there. It is my pleasure to be in the fray.
[Mr. Wilsonquestions Mother about the kidnapping of Manual Sarabia from Douglas, Arizona, during summer of 1907:]
I was in Arizona at that time. We had a strike on there with the Philip Dodge copper interest. The smelters, the men, or the slaves, rather, working in the smelters, had not been organized, and I went down there in Douglas to help organize those workers.
[Wilson asks Mother if she would rather sit down] I am so accustomed to standing when I am talking that I am uncomfortable when sitting down. That is too easy. [Laughter.]
Well, I was holding a meeting on the streets of Douglas on Sunday night for the workers that were in the smelters. An automobile was run out from the jail, from what I learned afterwards and this young Sarabia was thrown into it.
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Thus spoke Mother Jones, the plucky little white-haired woman, whose home, to use her own words, is “wherever there’s a labor war, and the President of the United States, when she had journeyed across half a continent to lay before him for the first time the cases of a number of political refugees in prison in Arizona, Kansas, and other Western States.
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