Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday March 24 1914
Walsenburg, Colorado – Mother Jones Taken from Train and Arrested by Militia
From The Hutchinson News (Kansas) of March 23, 1914:
“MOTHER” JONES AGAIN HELD
BY THE MILITARY
———–
She Was Arrested at Walsenburg
Upon Her Return There From Denver.
———-
John Lawson, Mother Jones, Horace Hawkins
Walsenburg, Colo., March 23-After a week’s freedom “Mother” Mary Jones is again a military prisoner in the strike zone. The aged strike leader was taken from a southbound Colorado and Southern train here this morning by Captain H. C. Nickerson, acting under orders of Adjutant General John Chase, and lodged in the county hospital under military guard. She is being held incommunicado.
Captain Nickerson left Trinidad last night under orders to arrest “Mother” Jones at Walsenburg when the announcement was made that she was leaving for Trinidad. The militia officer boarded the train at Pueblo and as it neared Walsenburg, ordered “Mother” Jones to alight with him at that point.
“I protest against such treatment,” declared the strike leader, “but I am not surprised.”
“I am acting under orders,” replied the officer.
“Well, I’ll get off,” she retorted.
John Brown, an organizer of the United Mine Workers of America, and known as “Mother” Jones’ body guard, who accompanied the aged strike leader, also left the train but was not placed under arrest.
Calls It Kidnapping.
Trinidad, Colo., March 23-“It’s a plain case of kidnapping,” declared John R. Lawson, International board member of the United Mine Workers, when advised that “Mother” Jones had been taken from a train at Walsenburg by the military authorities while on her way to Trinidad.
“Mother Jones was going through the place and as far as I know there is absolutely no charge against her. I hope that the supreme court will act in the matter at once.”
Mr. Lawson and John McLennan, president of District No. 15, United Mine Workers of America, left today for Walsenburg.
Hellraisers Journal – Friday January 22, 1904 Denver, Colorado – The Polly Pry Claims Mother Jones Could Be Former Madam
Leonel Ross Campbell, Denver journalist now turned scandal monger, writing under the name of Polly Pry, has recently directed her prying gaze upon Mother Jones. In her magazine, The Polly Pry, Campbell claims to have evidence, supplied by the Pinkertons, that “proves” that Mother Jones once ran various houses of ill-repute in Denver, Omaha, Kansas City, Chicago, and San Francisco. The file, it is claimed, dates back to 1889.
According to the report, Mother Jones could be the madam who hired the “best looking girls on the row” for her house on Market Street in Denver where she went broke after her paramour, “Black-leg,” supposedly ran off with one of her girls. She then began drinking and was arrested and jailed several times. The Prying Polly further reported that this woman was:
…an inmate of Jennie Rogers’ house on Market street, Denver, some twelve years ago. She got into trouble with the Rogers woman for bribing all of her girls to leave her and go to a house in Omaha-for which act she was paid a procuress fee of $5 to $10 apiece for the girls.
She was a confidential servant in Rose Lovejoy’s private house on Market street, Denver, and with her several years. …
Lived in Eva Lewis’ house on Market street at the time the Coxey Army passed through here, and took a prominent part in the Denver preparation for their care.
Is known to Harry Loss, a piano player at 1925 Market street, who says he knew her first in Omaha in 1894, when she lived in a house at tenth and Douglass.
She was then selling clothes to the girls. A sewing woman for the sporting class living on Lawrence street…says it was commonly reported that she was a procuress by trade.
[Emphasis added.]
The Pinkerton report goes on to claim that a Mary Harris (using her maiden name) was a “vulgar, heartless, vicious creature, with a fiery temper and a cold-blooded brutality rare even in the slums.”
Now, in the slander sheet which bears her pen name, Miss Polly Pry is careful to maintain a distance from her lurid charges by reporting on a supposed report on Mother Jones. Very clever of her, and also in keeping with her usual style of reporting on labor leaders who are the often made the targets of her attacks. She has previously defamed U. M. W. District 15 President Howells, U. M. W. National Organizer William Wardjon, and U. M. W. National Executive Board Member John Gehr. Anti-union newspapers across the country see fit to pick up these sordid stories from The Polly Pry and reprint them.
For her part, Mother Jones refuses to give dignity to the charges by responding to them in any way. U. M. W. attorneys doubt that a law suit would be successful since the charges made by The Polly Pry are implied rather than made directly.
Hellraisers Journal – Friday December 19, 1913 New Castle, Colorado – 37 Coal Miners Dead in Explosion at Vulcan Mine
From Grand Junction (Colorado) Daily Sentinel of December 17, 1913:
…..Among the mine victims of Tuesday are many of the boys who were made fatherless by the previous disaster [Feb. 18, 1896]. Widowed Mothers forced them into the mine again……
“Thank God I am a farmer,” said A. S. Tibbits at 2 o’clock this morning to a Sentinel reporter, after having spent the day in rescue work at the mine.
“I was one of the helpers in the Vulcan disaster eighteen years ago, but this explosion wrecked the mine a dozen times as bad.”…..
Hellraisers Journal – Friday December 11, 1903 Chicago, Illinois – John Mitchell Expects Peace in Southern Colorado
From the Chicago Inter Ocean of December 9, 1903:
Speculation that John Mitchell would fire Mother Jones for her part in delaying the separate settlement of the northern coal miners has not yet been realized. The following is an interview published in the Inter Ocean:
John Mitchell, president of the United Mine Workers, is at McCoy’s hotel. He came directly from Colorado.
“I regard the situation there as hopeful,” he said. “I believe a settlement will be reached, and I do not expect to have to return there. ‘Mother’ Jones and some of our best organizers are on the spot.
“The public mind, I believe, is somewhat confused concerning the troubles in the silver mines in Colorado. Many think that the United Mine Workers are concerned with them. Our men are coal miners only, and have had nothing to do with bringing about martial law. We have secured satisfactory settlements in the northern part of the state, and expect solid peace soon in the southern.”
[Emphasis added.]
Mitchell’s lack of concern for the metal miners is stunning. This lack of concern by Mitchell for these striking metal miners, now oppressed under military despotism, is another bone of contention between Mother Jones and her boss. Mother has shown all the Solidarity possible with the metal miners; she advocates unceasingly for unity between the United Mine Workers of America and the Western Federation of Miners.
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday December 2, 1913
Machine Guns Used to Wage War Against Striking Miners of Southern Colorado
From the International Socialist Review of December 1913:
MILITARISM is the heavy fist of the Capitalist class to beat the worker into abject submission. So well do they know the value of machine guns and soldiers that the utmost endeavor is constantly put forth by the Government-the ever-ready Servant of Vested interests, to seduce boys into the ranks of patriotic hirelings. Militiamen and soldiers are working men, hired for a consideration, to shoot and kill other workingmen in the name· of “law and order.”
Brute force, it is evident, is never entirely discarded by the capitalist robber class in their self-assumed right to exploit the worker of the product of his toil. Behind the courts, judges and injunctions, political machinery, class education and superstition, there always lurks the shadow of the big mit and the heavy club-the Military.
The velvet glove only covets the mailed hand.
Where the barons of the middle ages hired his knights and handmen to prey upon and keep in suppression the serfs of the surrounding territory, the coal barons of Colorado, New York and West Virginia maintain their teachers and editors, their preachers and professors, their lawyers, judges and political heelers for the same identical purpose-the robbing of the working class. When these forces fail to work expeditiously then-the honorable Governor is beseeched to call out the National Guard to preserve “law and order.”
The difference between the first exploiter of labor-the man with the knotted club-and John D. Rockefeller the holy, oily Christian philanthropist, is one of degree only. The robbery of the worker is equally complete. The spoils of the idle robber of today is greater than ever. Only the methods have changed.
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday November 26, 1913 City Jail, Trinidad, Colorado – Striking Miner Zancanelli Confesses
From the Trinidad Chronicle News of November 25, 1913:
Wednesday November 26, 1913 – Trinidad City Jail, Colorado -Louis Zancanelli Confesses to Killing Baldwin-Felts Gunthug George Belcher
Louis Zancanelli, who was arrested at the scene the night that George Belcher was shot and killed, has confessed. Also, according to General Chase, Zancanelli has named several union officers and organizers as part of a conspiracy to assassinate Belcher. Organizers Anthony B. McGarry and Sam Carter were named as having offered payment to Zancanelli, as well as Adolph Germer, who, it is claimed, arranged the assassination.
Arrest warrants have been issued for McGarry and Carter, but the two men cannot be found. Germer, who is in charge of U. M. W. operations in Walsenburg, has not yet been arrested, but scores of other striking miners have been arrested without warrants and are being held, many of them, incommunicado. Ed Doyle, Secretary-Treasurer of District 15, was seized by the militia on Monday, and Bob Uhlich, head of the miners’ office in Trinidad, was arrested on Tuesday. Uhlich was charged with being a “dangerous agitator,” and was ordered held indefinitely.
—————
—————
—————
—————
—————
—————
—————
—————
