Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday July 8, 1902 U. M. W. Secretary Wilson and Mother Jones to Brave Injunction in West Virginia
From the Indianapolis Sunday Journal of July 6, 1902:
WILL VIOLATE INJUNCTION. ———- Secretary Wilson, of the Mine Workers, Will Go to West Virginia.
W. B. Wilson, secretary of the United Mine Workers, will leave, this evening at 6 o’clock, for Clarksburg, W. Va., where, with “Mother” Jones, he will speak to-morrow night to a public meeting of miners. In taking part in the meeting Secretary Wilson puts his head in the lion’s mouth; that is to say, he will violate the injunction granted by the federal judge of the Southern district of West Virginia, which declared that he must not hold meetings with the miners within that jurisdiction.
[Mr. Wilson said yesterday:]
I realize that I am liable to be arrested, but I am not permitting that to worry me. I have made arrangements so that the financial affairs of the organization will run along smoothly in other hands should I be placed in jail. You can depend upon it that the affairs of the order will not suffer.
“Mother” Jones and I are billed to speak to the miners to-morrow evening at Clarksburg. Tuesday evening we will address another big meeting at Fairmount. As both of these towns are in the jurisdiction of Judge Keller, they may try to enforce the injunction, but, as I say, I am not troubling myself about that. We will address a public meeting of orderly men, and it would be a high-handed proceeding to attempt to interfere with it.
Secretary Wilson believes that the injunction order cannot be sustained by a fair construction of constitutional law and that Judge Keller went beyond his powers in issuing the injunction in Philadelphia, which is not within his jurisdiction.
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday June 10, 1902 Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania – Great Anthracite Strike Likely to be Long Siege
From the New York Tribune of June 9, 1902:
Top: Section of Mine Stockade and Guards’ Shanty. Coal and Iron Police Lined Along the Stockade. Bottom: Crowd of Strikers with “SCAB” Banner at Parsons.
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CAN KEEP MOST MINES DRY ———-
ANTHRACITE SITUATION INDICATES THAT BOTH SIDES EXPECT LONG SIEGE.
(BY TELEGRAPH TO THE TRIBUNE.)
Wilkesbarre, Penn., June 8.-News of the strike in Virginia, and West Virginia, is coming slowly to President Mitchell at his headquarters here, and to-night he said: “I cannot yet give out a statement, because I do not know enough of the situation. My reports are arriving slowly. Probably I shall have them completed late to-night, and will make a statement to-morrow. As to the situation in the districts I have heard from, I do not now desire to say anything.” There is much anxiety among the officers at the headquarters on account of this new strike [in the Virginias], because it is understood the response is not as large as was expected. Even President Mitchell’s conservative estimate of eighteen thousand may be too high when all the districts are in. In charge of the strike on the scene are National Treasurer W. B. Wilson and a force of twenty organizers and national officers. The success of this strike means much toward the success of the anthracite strike, and Mitchell is anxious to make certain that there is a chance of it succeeding. The operators here say that the strike is a fizzle, and that it will be all over in a couple of weeks.
To-morrow will begin the fifth week of the [Pennsylvania anthracite] strike, and there is not the slightest sign of the operators or the miners weakening. President Mitchell believed that by the end of May he could have the entire region tied up and nearly all the engineers, firemen and pumpmen out on strike with the miners. He has succeeded, except in the Lackawanna district. The operators, despite their sanguine statements, knew a month ago what the situation would be at the end of the month, and everything is as planned except the outbreaks……
It is estimated to-night that since the strike began forty-eight thousand mine workers have left this region, or about one-third of the number who went on strike. If the mines were to resume work to-morrow there would be only enough men in the region to get out about half the normal output.
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday April 21, 1912 Duluth, Minnesota – Mother Jones Speaks at Lincoln Park Auditorium
From The Labor World of April 20, 1912:
Mary Jones, the little mother of the miners, and familiarly known throughout the country as Mother Jones, was a visitor in Duluth Monday and Tuesday. She delivered an address Monday evening at the Lincoln Park Auditorium in the interest of the shop employes of the Harriman lines who are on strike.
Mother Jones has been sent out by the United Mine Workers’ Union to help the striking railroad men. She is meeting with much success in soliciting funds. A fairly good collection was taken up at the Lincoln Park meeting.
During her visit to Duluth, Mother Jones spent much of her time in the office of the Labor World. We have’ known her for almost twenty years, and blamed if she does not look younger today than she did two decades ago. She attributes her youthful appearance to the fact that she has not been in jail lately nor has she been quarantined for smallpox.
Is Eighty Years of Age.
Mother Jones will be eighty years of age on May first. She is as active and as sprightly as a woman of thirty. She never looked better in her life. Her complexion is as clear as that of a baby and there is not the sign of a furrow on her kind old face.
Fight? When she is asked a question about labor conditions in the mining regions of America, her eyes flash, her mouth is set firm, her fist is clenched and she stretches out her arm with the vigor and force of an athlete. She tells a story of social injustice that reaches the heart of the most hardened.
In her speech at Lincoln Park the daily newspapers dwelled only upon the shafts she hurled at men and women of the toady type who “bend the cringing hinges of the knee that thrift may follow fawning.”
Knows the Labor Movement.
Mother Jones understands the philosophy of the labor movement. She has a peculiar way, which is distinctly her own, of driving her points right to the hearts of her listeners. For a moment she will philosophically discuss the growth and development of production; then like a flash she will clinch her argument with a militant attack upon both men and women who are responsible for injustices that have been permitted to creep into the industrial system.
Mother Jones is said to be without fear. During her strenuous life she has been cast into prison, confined in bull pens, driven at the points of bayonets, and once or twice has had a pistol aimed close to her face by willing servants of the capitalistic class.
Hellraisers Journal – Monday April 15, 1912 Mother Jones News Round-Up for March 1912, Part I
Found in Illinois, Denver, Colorado and Tacoma, Washington
From The Sibley Journal of March 1, 1912:
Walker to Head Miners.
The closing day of the Illinois Mine Workers’ state convention was featured by the announcement of election from the vote held December 14, 1911.
It was generally thought at that time that all the officers would be re-elected. There was but one exception in this, Paul Smith defeating Adolph Germer for the vice presidency. President Walker and Secretary Treasurer McDonald were re-elected by large majorities…..
Aside from the announcement of the election results, a two-hour address by ”Mother” Jones, a woman, eighty years old, who is a Socialist lecturer of national prominence and called the “Miners’ Mascot,” in which she denounced woman suffrage, was the feature. She declared that women are not mentally equipped to acquire a proper knowledge of politics, and she attributed the defeat of the recall in Colorado to the women voters. In closing her address, “Mother” Jones detailed the conditions brought about by the railroad strike in Colorado and asked the miners of Illinois to donate a benefit fund of $1,000 to the strikers. A committee was named to investigate the matter…..
[Photograph added.]
From The Illinois State Journal of March 2, 1912:
From the Denver Rocky Mountain News of March 5, 1912:
NORTHERN COLORADO COAL
STRIKE ENDS IN 8 MINES
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6 KILLED, 10 MAIMED 100 BEATEN, BLOODY RECORD OF WAR ———- Strikebreakers’ Refusals to Quit Fields Cause of Most Serious Outbreaks. ———-
“Six men killed, ten maimed for life and more than 100 waylaid and beaten.” This is the record of bitterness between the opposing forces of the labor war in the Northern coal were from the ranks of both strikers and strike breakers…..
One of the striking features of the struggle occurred a few months ago, when “Mother Jones,” a well known national figure in the labor world, went into the district to organize the wives and sisters of the striking miners. She received an enthusiastic reception, but when the women attempted to carry out their ideas the strikers objected so strenuously that they were forced to abandon their militant plans for a campaign.
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From the Denver United Labor Bulletin of March 21, 1912:
“MOTHER” JONES LEAVES DENVER. ———-
“Mother” Jones, who has been in Denver for several days, addressed the Federated Shopmen in their convention in Machinists’ hall this week. She is preparing to tour the northwest in the interests of the shopmen. She will go to Tacoma and then travel East as far as St. Paul.
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday March 19, 1902 Mother Jones News Round-Up for February 1902, Part II Found Returning to West Virginia as Organizer for U. M. W. A.
From The Philadelphia Inquirer of February 16, 1902:
Mother Jones stopped over in the city yesterday on her way to the Southern coal fields, to the organization of which region she has been assigned by President Mitchell, of the United Mine Workers.
[Photograph added.]
From the Birmingham Labor Advocate of February 22, 1902:
It is interesting to note the progress being made by the organization of Textile Workers for the betterment of the workers in the textile industries, both North and South.
A national organization of these workers with affiliation with the American Federation of Labor was only formed last year, and delegates were accepted at the last convention at Scranton. The organization consists of the workers in cotton factories and knitting mills and their strides forward have been rapid and well taken. Quite a foothold has been secured in the Carolinas, particularly North Carolina, the Charlotte district being compactly organized.
[…..]
The condition of the textile workers are little understood, and if told in cold black type would probably create a furore….They are first robbed of all independence, planted in company houses, often fed from company stores and worked at the company’s will. The result is that the spirit of organization has hard ground to work over, but the Textile Workers’ organization is making headway.
Mother Jones, that noted woman who has devoted her life to the interest of the organization of labor and to the betterment of the conditions of the workers, and whose penchant seems to be the factory workers, came to Birmingham a few years ago and spent considerable time in the Avondale mills working as a weaver and trying to lay ground plans for an organization, but the time was not ripe; yet many of the facts that she made known have been most useful in the work now progressing…..
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday March 16, 1912 Washington, D. C. – Lawrence Children Appear Before House Committee
From the Everett Labor Journal of March 15, 1912:
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(Republished from Los Angeles Citizen.)
“The chill hand of charity” got a severe slap a few days ago when Congressman Victor Berger grabbed a bill from a hat that was being passed for the benefit of the child textile strikers from Lawrence, Mass., who appeared before the house committee on rules, and hurled it into the face of its donor, J. H. Cox, a mill owner of Lawrence.
“We don’t want your money; it’s blood money,” cried Berger, indignantly. “We’ll take care of our own without your help.”
If it were possible to Bergerize the public conscience and cast the frown of public disapproval on the Cox kind of charity—the bribe of industrial bandits to satisfy society—Lawrence episodes would become less frequent.
In the same room in which only a month or so ago Andrew Carnegie complained bitterly because he had been paid only $320,000,000 for his properties by the steel corporation; where Judge Gary confided to a committee from congress that the steel trust had $75,000,000 in cash always ready to meet an emergency, child strikers in the mills at Lawrence laid bare their scars to pitying congressmen.
Presented by Representative Berger as an exhibit of what “one of the most highly protected industries in America does to human life by which it is served,” thirteen sallow-cheeked, thin-lipped, hollow-eyed, poorly-clad children, and six adults marched up Pennsylvania avenue and filed solmenly into the capitol.
In the room where attendants hurried to wait upon the smallest wish of Carnegie, Gary and Schwab, nobody had arranged for the comfort of these “exhibits” and they stood along the wall until Representative Henry, accompanied by his own little son, of eight, took pity on their plight.
“Get chairs for these children,” commanded Judge Henry. “Arrange them any way you want and take your time,” he added to Mr. Berger.
Before the witnesses began Chairman Wilson of the committee on labor pleaded for a federal investigation on the ground that in refusing to permit children to leave Lawrence several days ago the state authorities had violated the federal law.
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 – Monday February 17, 1902 Mother Jones News Round-Up for January 1902, Part II Found Speaking at Indianapolis United Mine Workers Convention
From The Indianapolis News of January 21, 1902:
MOTHER JONES TALKED. ———- A Speech to the Convention While Waiting for Miss Meredith.
While the convention awaited the coming of Miss Meredith to make charges against the national officers, this forenoon, the committee called for “Mother Jones” and she responded in a stirring speech.
She said it was a critical time for the miners’ organization, and she urged cautious and intelligent action on the part of the organisation in order to accomplish its purposes. She related, in an interesting way, her experiences in strikes and in the mining districts in the East.
One characteristic incident was of a time when a strike was on and the mining company’s policeman called on her to keep her from taking the miners’ part.
“Who are you?” she asked the policeman.
“The company’s watchman,” the officer replied.
“Well,” replied “Mother” Jones, “the company doesn’t own me. I’m responsible to God Almighty and He and I stand in on this question.”
This met with vigorous applause from the miners.
She urged greater respect for the Mine Workers’ organization, and censured the man who refused to pay dues to the national organization.
[She exclaimed:]
You poor, benighted, brainless creature that you are. You poor, ignorant, slaving serf. If the company offered you a barrel of beer, you would take it and fill your stomach; but won’t pay 25 cents to help the national organization.
She said the miners must be intelligent enough to emancipate themselves.
You have emancipated the mules that work with you and demanded that they shall be turned out to grass, but you nave not emancipated yourselves. The mule enjoys the air and grass, while you still toil down in the bad air of the mine working more than eight hours a day.
In a pathetic way she told of miners’ children, and in conclusion she said:
I plead with you men to go home and do your duty as men. Young men miners who work in the mines all day long and come out at night and never read a book. You don’t seem to study your coal trade only over men whom you have to deal with. Study your work and be prepared to take your post. You must be ready to go to jail, and must be willing to face bullets or even be hanged for your principles.
[Note: Miss Meredith charged that President John Mitchell and Secretary-Treasure William B. Wilson had minimized embezzlement committed by ex-Secretary W. C. Pearce, which charges were unanimously rejected by the Convention]
Hellraisers Journal – Friday February 10, 1922 Mother Jones News Round-Up for September 1921, Part III Found Speaking to Delegates at Convention of United Mine Workers
Indianapolis, Convention of the United Mine Workers of America Sixth Day, Afternoon Session, Monday September 26, 1921
“I can fight…”
Indiana Daily Times September 27, 1921
Vice-President Murray: I understand that Mother Jones has just arrived in the convention and I am going to request Brother David Fowler to escort her to the platform. It isn’t necessary that I should introduce Mother Jones to you at this time; it isn’t necessary that I should eulogize the work she has performed for the coal diggers of America, and I will simply present to the convention at this time our good friend, Mother Jones.
ADDRESS OF MOTHER JONES
Mr. Chairman and Delegates: I have been watching you from a distance, and you have been wasting a whole lot of time and money. I want you to stop it.
All along the ages, away back in the dusty past, the miners started their revolt. It didn’t come in this century, it came along in the cradle of the race when they were ground by superstition and wrong. Out of that they have moved onward and upward all the ages against all the courts, against all the guns, in every nation they have moved onward and upward to where they are today, and their effort has always been to get better homes for their children and for those who were to follow them.
I have just come up from West Virginia. I left Williamson last Friday and came into Charleston. I was doing a little business around there looking after things. We have never gotten down to the core of the trouble that exists there today. Newspapers have flashed it, magazines have contained articles, but they were by people who did not understand the background of the great struggle…..
I walked nine miles one night with John H. Walker in the New River field after we had organized an army of slaves who were afraid to call their souls their own. We didn’t dare sleep in a miner’s house; if we did the family would be thrown out in the morning and would have no place to go. We walked nine miles before we got shelter. When we began to organize we had to pay the men’s dues, they had no money.
At one time some of the organizers came down from Charleston, went up to New Hope and held a meeting. They had about fourteen people at the meeting. The next morning the conductor on the train told me the organizers went up on a train to Charleston. I told Walker to bill a meeting at New Hope for the next night and I would come up myself. He said we could not bill meetings unless the national told us to. I said: “I am the national now and I tell you to bill that meeting.” He did.
When we got to the meeting there was a handful of miners there and the general manager, clerks and all the pencil pushers they could get. I don’t know but there were a few organizers for Jesus there, too. We talked but said nothing about organizing. Later that night a knock came on the door where I was staying and a bunch of the boys were outside. They asked if I would organize them. I said I would. They told me they hadn’t any money. Walker said the national was not in favor of organizing, they wanted us only to agitate. I said: “John, I am running the business here, not the national; they are up in Indianapolis and I am in New Hope. I am going to organize those fellows and if the national finds any fault with you, put it on me—I can fight the national as well as I can the company if they are not doing right.”
[…..]
When we began organizing in 1903 the battle royal began. The companies began to enlist gunmen. I went up the Stanaford Mountain and held a meeting with the men. There wasn’t a more law-abiding body of men in America than those men were. While they were on strike the court issued an injunction forbidding them to go near the mines. They didn’t. I held a meeting that night, went away and next morning a deputy sheriff went up to arrest those men. He had a warrant for them. The boys said: “We have broken no law; we have violated no rules; you can not arrest us.” They notified him to get out of town and he went away. They sent for me and I went up. I asked why they didn’t let him arrest the men. They said they hadn’t done anything and I told them that was the reason they should have surrendered to the law.
That very night in 1903, the 25th day of February, those boys went to bed in their peaceful mining town. They had built their own school house and were sending their children to school. They were law-abiding citizens. While they slept in their peaceful homes bullets went through the walls and several of them were murdered in their beds. I went up next morning on an early train. The agent said they had trouble on Standifer [Stanaford] Mountain, that he heard going over the wires news that some people were hurt. I turned in my ticket, went out and called a couple of the boys. We went up the mountain on the next train and found those men dead in their homes, lying on mattresses wet with their blood and the bullet holes through the walls.
I want to clear this thing up, for it has never been cleared up. I saw there a picture that will forever be a disgrace to American institutions. There were men who had been working fourteen hours a day, who had broken no law, murdered in their peaceful homes. Nobody was punished for those murders.
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday January 8, 1902 Mother Jones News Round-Up for December 1901, Part II Found Ready to Answer Call for Annual Convention of Coal Miners
From The Indianapolis News of December 23, 1901:
TO MINE WORKERS ———- Call for Annual Convention Next Month. ———-
NEARLY A THOUSAND DELEGATES WILL ATTEND.
———- GREAT LABOR ORGANIZATION ———- PRESIDENT MITCHELL ON CIVIC FEDERATION PLAN.
———- He Sees Great Promise in the Proposed Meeting of Capital and Labor.
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[Mother Jones to Take Part.]
The call for the annual convention of the United Mine Workers of America and the joint conference of the miners and bituminous operators of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania, who are now represented in the interstate agreement, was issued to-day. The convention of the mine workers will be held in Tomlinson Hall. It will begin January 20, and will continue until January 30, when the miners and operators will begin their joint conference.
President Mitchell said to-day that the convention will be the largest that has ever represented any single body of organized labor. Numerically it will exceed the convention of the American Federation of Labor, held recently at Scranton, Pa., as there will be nearly one thousand delegates.Preparations are being made throughout every bituminous field in the United States now for the meeting. It is also expected that every operator of the four States concerned in the interstate agreement will be represented.
The operators of Virginia and West Virginia, who thus far have refused to meet the miners, have been invited and it is thought that a number of them will be present and will pave the way for a joint agreement between them and their men. Secretary [William B.] Wilson, of the miners, says that Ben Tillett, the famous English labor leader, will be present throughout the proceedings. “Mother” Jones, a national character among labor unions, will also take part in the convention…
At their convention, the miners will determine on the basis for their scale for the coming year and will also prepare other demands to which they will ask the operators to agree. All the proceedings except when the scale is fixed will open to the public. The operators also will probably meet in Indianapolis a few days before the date of the joint conference for the purpose of arranging for the presentation of their side. The night of January 30 at banquet will be given at Tomlinson Hall for the miners and operators.
The mine workers compose the largest labor organization in the world. The membership is now above 275,000.
President Mitchell, who has just returned from New York, where he attended the meeting of the National Civic Federation, says the work it contemplates is the greatest thing of the kind ever attempted, and that its magnitude can not be overestimated. He thinks that the fact that men like Senator Hanna and President Schwab, of the steel corporation attended the meeting is an acknowledgment of the fact that there is a labor problem to solve. He is also encouraged because men like Senator Hanna expressed a willingness to meet with representatives of organized labor in joint conference for the purpose of signing annual agreements. It is the opinion of President Mitchell that the Federation will try to work out a scheme whereby representatives of labor and capital everywhere may meet and perfect an annual agreement, “Whenever the representatives of capital and labor meet on an equality,” he declared, “then they will reach at agreement.”
President Mitchell thinks it probable that the Civic Federation will have another meeting in New York in February.
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The call for the annual convention of the United Mine Workers of America and the joint conference of the miners and bituminous operators of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania, who are now represented in the interstate agreement, was issued to-day. The convention of the mine workers will be held in Tomlinson Hall. It will begin January 20, and will continue until January 30, when the miners and operators will begin their joint conference.