You, the wives of the strikers,
ought to be out raising hell.
This is the fighting age.
Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
Hellraisers Journal, Saturday October 7, 1916
New York, New York – Mother Jones Speaks, Blamed for “Riot”
On Thursday October 5th, Mother Jones spoke to the wives of the striking street carmen of New York City. She spoke at Mozart Hall where she told the women:
You, the wives of the strikers, ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes
A few women left the hall and attacked one of the surface cars of the New York Railways Company resulting in a few arrests. This was termed a “riot” in blaring headlines from The New York Times and others of the kept press.
The Address of Mother Jones
During her speech at Mozart Hall, Mother spoke of the lives of the street car workers and the effect of the long hours of labor upon family life. She advised the women to stop being “sentimental” and to put on their “fighting clothes.”
I know something of what life is like for street car workers. I have talked to men who work on the cars from one end of the country to the next and I know how terribly exploited they are. But none are more exploited than the carmen in this, the leading city of the United States. You know and I know that your husbands have to work seven days a week with no provisions for days off; that their basic work day consists of ten hour time actually spent on a car run, but that it frequently takes 15 hours of working time to receive their ten hours pay. No provision exists for any overtime pay. It is not unusual, as you know, for your husbands to spend upwards of 80 hours a week on the cars. The car runs are frequently not consecutive but are split by three-or four hour breaks. When do your husbands have time for you and your children? The church and the press are worried about families breaking up, but when the workers go on strike to have the time to keep their families together, these same lackeys of the employers denounce them for doing so. And on top this, the wages your husbands bring home for the longest work week of any car workers in the country are the lowest earned by men in this trade anywhere.