Tag: WFM District 2

Hellraisers Journal: From “A Radical Newspaper” of Lead, South Dakota: “The Beginning of Life” by M. Helen Schloss

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Helen Schloss, Women w Hungry Souls, Black Hills Dly Rg p2, July 15, 1910———-

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday July 20, 1910
“The Beginning of Life” by M. Helen Schloss

From The Black Hills Daily Register of July 15, 1910
-Official Organ of Western Federation of Miners, District 2:

Black Hills Dly Rg, WFM D2, p2, July 15, 1910Article by Helen Schloss, Black Hills Dly Rg p2, July 15, 1910

I sat looking out in the cold, dark, dreary night listening to the roaring winds and the gruesome sounds of the elements. Everything seemed to whisper mournful tales and all different sounds were telling me of the life that is to come when the soul awakens.

Lost in these thoughts, I suddenly came upon a large tract of land. On this tract of land stood two huge scales with iron chains. At one scale stood men, and at the other women and children. The men were pulling leisurely; they would look up now and then and pause to rest, while the women and children never stopped to look up or rest. Their bodies were bent to the ground, and their faces were old and haggard. The children would drop like flies from exhaustion, but there were others to take their places, while the women would never take the time to look after them.

I walked up to a woman and asked why they were living in such darkness, and why they were pulling so hard, and she gave me a vacant stare. I walked up to a man and asked him the same question, and he said: “They were pulling for life.” I asked why the women were pulling so hard, while they were pulling so easy. He answered: “When we were called out of our houses to pull the women became frightened of these men on the top and they have never dared to look up. If they would stop and look up they would not have to pull so hard, but they fear.”

Sometimes the men would shake their fists at the men on top, and then the chains would grow lighter and the scale would lower a few inches. But the scale of the women would never lower. Some fell to the ground with blood on their hands and faces. The groans from the people below and the sneering laughter from those above filled the air with unearthly sounds.

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Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for May 1910, Part I: Found Speaking for Workers in Sioux City, Iowa, and Fort Wayne, Indiana

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, Capitalism Owns, Black Hills Dly Rg p1, May 4, 1910———-

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday June 11, 1910
Mother Jones News Round-Up for May 1910, Part I:
-Found Speaking in Sioux City, Iowa, and Fort Wayne, Indiana

From The Sioux City Journal of May 2, 1910:

FIGHTING WORKERS NEEDED.
—–
Mother Jones Says Capitalism Drives
Laboring Men to Drink.

Mother Jones, Cprd, Dly Missoulian p28, May15, 1910

We don’t get the philosophy we want from the preachers, that is why we don’t go to church.

-declared Mother Jones, known country wide as a battler for the cause of the working man, during her address before a large socialistic audience at Bennett’s hall last night.

[She continued:]

Ministers never work. We need fighting workers now.

Mother Jones is well advanced in years and small in stature. In her opinion the capitalistic class owns the officials, the policemen and the ministers. She has her own theory regarding prohibition. She figures the antisaloon leagues are going at the question from the wrong side. In her opinion the factories in which the working men toil away their lives and the hardships imposed upon them by the capitalistic class drive them to drink, and it is through a radical change from this source that temperance will come.

The speaker said the womanhood of the nation is sinking slowly but gradually because girls and women are forced from home to sweatshops, where also may be found little children. When the history of this age is written, in her opinion, it will go down on the books as the most corrupt of all times. If the women would assert themselves she believes the trouble of the working man would be cleared up over night.

[Photograph added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for February 1910, Part II: Found Supporting Black Hills Miners of South Dakota

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, No master no slave, Speech Dec 9, NY Cl p2, Dec 10, 1909———-

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday March 13, 1910
Mother Jones News Round-Up for February 1910, Part II:
-Found Supporting the Miners of the Black Hills in South Dakota

From the Black Hills Daily Register of February 22, 1910:

Mother Jones Sends Money

Organ D2 WFM, Black Hills Dly Rg p2, Feb 22, 1910

James Kirwan yesterday received a letter from Mother Jones, who is now in Milwaukee, informing him that she was coming to Lead to take a hand in the fight for the right to organize. She asked no money, but, on the contrary, enclosed a check for one hundred dollars, with these words:

My boys in Lead gave me one hundred and fifty dollars for the 1909 Labor Day speech. Fifty dollars of this sum I gave to the Mexicans and I am sending you the balance for the locked-out Black Hills boys.

Further along in her letter, Mother says:

Tell the boys to keep up that fight. Have no surrender written on the banners of the Western Federation of Miners. I am coming up there to take a hand. The Hearst crowd of blood-suckers are organizing to get more profits. We also have a right to organize to give that crew of blood-suckers less profits. Tell my boys to stand pat. Mother.

———-

From the Socialist Montana News of February 24, 1910:

[Mother Jones in Milwaukee]

A non-partisan anti-high-price mass meeting was called for Feb. 15 by the Milwaukee Federated Trades Council Among the speakers who addressed the meeting were A. M. Simons, editor of the Chicago Daily Socialist, and Mother Jones. This so hurt the feelings of Senator Stephenson’s organ, the Free Press, that it indulged in several columns of abuse against the meeting. It had a great deal to say about the “poor attendance” of the meeting, although the hall was packed to the doors, and many were obliged to stand.

The real grievance of this capitalist sheet was that the capitalist politician who addressed the meeting cut a poor figure, having no remedy to offer except the enforcement of the law and investigation of facts which our pocket-books already understand all too well, while the Socialist speakers made ringing addresses which were roundly applauded. Resolutions that the people must own the trusts were adopted by the audience without one dissenting vote.

[Paragraph break added.]

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