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Tuesday February 1, 1916
Indianapolis, Indiana - Mother Jones Addresses Convention of United Mine Workers, Part II

Yesterday's Hellraisers presented part one of the speech delivered by Mother Jones during Saturday's afternoon session of the United Mine Workers Convention, now coming to a close in the city of Indianapolis. Today we are pleased to present part two of her speech wherein we hear her response to a mine owner who longs for her death.

You have made more progress in government, boys, in the last three years than you had made in 125 years prior to that. We have got more recognition in the last three years than in all that time. The Secretary of Labor, who is a member of the President's cabinet, was in Pennsylvania when the strike at Arnot took place. That was before the anthracite strike. I was sent for and went there. The men were going to work next morning. I addressed a meeting that afternoon. Nobody went to work next morning, but I was thrown out of the hotel at eleven o'clock at night—I was an undesirable citizen. I went up the mountain. I saw a light and kept crawling up until I got there. When I got to the house a man there said, “Did they put you out of the hotel?” I said, “Yes, but I will put them out before I get through with them.”

The president of District No. 2 worked day and night and gave ail he had to that strike. One night I sat in W. B. Wilson's house. He was there with his feet bare. About eleven o'clock at night we were talking about a move I was going to make when a knock came on the door. Wilson opened it. I left the room. Three men came in, sat down and discussed the strike. One of them said, “Say, Wilson, we can make it twenty or twenty-five thousand dollars if you go away and let this fight fall to pieces. You can take the old woman with you.”

Wilson never told that, but I heard it. He got up with his voice quivering and said, “Gentlemen, if you have come here to accept the hospitality of my home it is yours, every inch of it; if you have come here to get me to betray my fellow men and my own family, there is the door.” Next morning we had black coffee and bread for breakfast but we made the fight and won. If they have had a fight since I have never heard of it. Now, that man is the Secretary of Labor, and you knife him and say everything about him, yet he went barefoot, tired and weary and he did not get a Taft stomach on him when he was out organizing.

You stood here and attacked this man—President White. Now I want to make this statement before I close. I have worked under all your administrations. There is Flyzik back there. He comes here from the State of Washington. He was a kid when he walked fifteen miles over the mountains with me in Pennsylvania to meet the militia. The officers of the organization were sleeping in Hazleton when that army of women with Flyzik and a bunch of the other boys met on Track 13 in the middle of the night and brought out 5,000 men. You gave a ten-thousand-dollar house to the chief executive, but you never gave a dollar to those women, and they didn’t own a shingle on the houses they lived in.

Mother Jones with the children of striking miners.

This administration has had more fights on its hands, more to go up against than any administration you have had since you were organized. The officers have had to stand more abuse—and I know the whole of them but I am not under obligations to any of them—than the officers of any previous administration. I am not under obligations to any of them. I don’t allow one of them to pay for a meal for me. Do you know why? Because I want my hands clean, and if they don’t fill the bill I want to go after them with clean hands and tell you all about it. We have got to be true to each other.

I made many trips from Colorado to see President White. I made many trips from West Virginia that nobody knew anything in the world about, because I wanted him to be familiar with everything that was going on. A man who has had Nova Scotia, Westmoreland, the Southwest, Vancouver, West Virginia, Colorado and Ohio on his hands has not had much peace—I want to tell you that! I have watched these strikes with a great deal of care and I know how the people in this administration have acted. I am not in the habit of defending people who do not deserve it.

Here is a headline in a paper: “Forty armored strike-breaking cars gift of steel magnate to the State.” The gasoline castles, Gary and the rest of them have donated forty armored autos in answer to these warnings, so that the gunmen can go in safety and attack you in your strikes. And you had better line up because I don’t care what political party you have in Washington, you must have an organized economic army on the industrial field. If you have that you can make Washington, Indiana, and every other State come to time. Get into your unions, pay your dues like men and don’t be grunting and saying, “By God, here is another assessment!” The other fellows sit back and laugh when you do that; they say, “We have them going now, we have got them divided.”

Years ago I went to the coke ovens in Pennsylvania where they worked the men twelve and fourteen hours a day. I walked eighteen miles to get into the cotton mills to expose the infamies of your charity brigade, your foreign missions and other hypocritical movements of the capitalists who were murdering the children in the mills. A lawyer sent me five dollars. He sent it by one of the boys for the work I did in the mills. They were taking the hands of those children in the mills with their machinery. I took eighty of them to Philadelphia with me and showed them to the ministers and every one else in order to stir up the nation to the crime it was committing.

We walked all the way to Oyster Bay from Philadelphia to see the man who was President of the United States at that time, to try to get Congress to pass a bill to stop that slaughter of the children in the mills, mines and factories, and he would not see us. He is a brave guy when he wants to take a gun and go out and fight other grown people, but when those children went to him he could not see them. But we did not stop, and out of that fight we made has come this child labor bill that is before Congress. One paper called me a horrible woman for taking the children out. Why, the kids had the time of their lives. Everybody fed them. We got into the Oriental Hotel where the Wall Street people eat, and there was steak and quail on toast—the first time I ever ate quail on toast. We had the finest feast we ever struck. The young ones all went back strong and well, but they had to go into the mills again. However, Pennsylvania has passed a law that keeps them out.

I never in my life asked President White for a favor. I wouldn’t take it from him if he wanted to give it to me. I want to say to you here that you have the hardest-worked President, Vice-President and Secretary you have ever had in your history. You talk a great deal about young John D. Young John D. is not to blame; you are to blame. They couldn’t keep you from organizing in Colorado if you were men enough. I had a conversation of two hours and twenty minutes with John D. I found him one of the most unassuming men. Young John D. never said “I cawn’t,” and “I shawn’t;” he talked simple like we do, and that is more than some people in the labor movement do. If you line up and demand your rights in a logical way Colorado will be the best organized State in the Union, and John D. Rockefeller will help you to organize it.

I am going to Youngstown. I didn't ask Mr. White whether or not I could go—I am going anyhow. I went to the garment workers in Chicago. Somebody said afterwards, “Did Mr. White tell you to get away?” I said, “No, sir, he didn’t; and if he had I would not have done it.” Nobody owns me. When it comes to a fight for my class I don't care if they are revolters or not I am going to be with them when they are fighting the common enemy; then when the fight with the other fellow is over I will fight to make them come back into their bona fide organization. Girls worked in Chicago for eight cents an hour. In the strike the police got ten dollars for every girl they beat up. We are going to stop that.

I will be 85 years old next May, and I am as well able to fight as I was forty years ago. Don't bother about politics; keep close to the economic struggle; don't allow politicians to interfere with your business. Let them attend to their own business and we will attend to ours. Don't let the ministers bother you, we know the Lord Jesus Christ as well as they do. They don’t let us go into their church conferences and they have no right to come into ours. I said to a man in New York, “Keep your hands off; this is our fight. I don’t want any freedom that comes from the other class; I want the freedom I have fought for and bought myself and then I will keep it.”

Our men in West Virginia were beaten up, and when I was in Washington and they asked me if I told the miners to buy guns I said, “Yes, I did; I told them to buy guns because an armed people have never yet been conquered.” When the Governor of West Virginia sent to Boomer to get the guns he sent a doctor—a political lickspittle. They let him bill the meeting and pay for the hall rent. I went down and took possession of it and said, “Boys, have you got any guns?” “Yes, Mother, sure.” “Did you pay for them?” “Sure, we paid for them.” “Then the guns are yours. Don't you give those guns to Dr. Montgomery, to the Governor, to anybody else who comes after them. Keep them at home and if any gunmen come there to invade your homes do business.” That is the way to do business, isn’t it, Mr. Newspaper Man? Lawson gave the guns to the military when they came in. You bet your life I wouldn’t have given them up!

I am going into the Fairmount region to organize the miners there; I am going up the Norfolk and Western, and I am going to take big, long Tom Haggerty along. And I want the very best organizers there are in the United States, the very best men you have, and I am going to pick them myself. We are going to turn over West Virginia thoroughly organized, and then, if I am spared I am going down to Alabama. If I am not alive I will be up with God Almighty and I am going to tell him to fix me up so that I can go down and raise hell with them anyway. An old mine owner in West Virginia said, “Why don’t you die?” I said, “God Almighty wants me to live long enough to raise hell with you and make a man out of you instead of a thief.”

Now, boys, be good. Stand by your officers and when the day comes they are not worthy of your confidence and support I will be the first to come to the front and tell you. Go home with a new heart, with new resolutions, with the hope of a new day for the children who will come after you. John Brown committed murder in his day; the courts of the country condemned him and he was hung. He was a criminal in the eyes of the court and in the eyes of many of the Nation; but he was a hero in the eyes of God. He started the war on chattel slavery. We have got to carry on the war on industrial slavery.

Boys, look back the stairway of years, look back over our fights. I remember our fights in Chicago when we hadn’t a penny, when no organizer was paid, when we had to tramp six miles to attend a meeting, and we did it cheerfully. I look back on those grand days when the men who fought so well paved the way for the movement you have today. Many of those men are in their graves. Martin Irons is one of those who was persecuted. I went to see his grave after he had been dead nineteen years. It was in Brownsville, Texas. When I got off the train I asked the agent if Martin Irons was buried there. He said he was. I got a butcher named Williams to go to the grave with me.

Martin Irons was a hero, but he was maligned, vilified and persecuted. He gave up his life that you might be here today. His grave was by a fence, overgrown with weeds and neglected. It was marked by a broken shovel. When he was Master Workman of the Iron Mountain Division he was called from Kansas City to St. Louis. The strike call was written up. When he was being shown to his room by the bell boy they said, “Come this way to this room.” He went back with them to a room they had rented, they put a pistol to his head and said, “You sign this strike call or we will kill you.” He signed the strike call. The secretary and treasurer were Pinkertons.

When Martin Irons left Kansas City I had five dollars. I wanted to give him three. He wouldn’t take it. He said, “Mother, they have taken my home, killed my wife, they have ruined me, they have taken everything!” I said, “No, Martin, they have left you your manhood, and that is worth all the wealth in the world. So that day when I knelt at his grave in Brownsville I remembered these things. Humanity had forgotten him, but there was a mocking bird singing over his grave. I wrote the matter up. The boys in Mount Olive, Illinois, said they would give me a grave for him. I intended to raise his body and bring him up with the martyred dead in Mount Olive, but the State Federation of Missouri took the matter in hand and sent a tombstone there. If I live long enough I will bring Martin Irons' body and that tombstone to Mount Olive and bury him with his co-workers. When he was on the rock pile in Memphis, Powderly sent him fifteen dollars to pay his fine. You boys have no idea of what we went through in those days. I look back over the long struggle, the dark hours, the suffering, and I know it was not in vain. I see the sun breaking through the clouds.

When I come back from Youngstown I will go to Colorado. The gunmen are there but they won’t touch me. I am not a bit afraid of them. I am going into all the mining camps, Mr. White, whether you agree with me or not, that belong to John D. Rockefeller and I am going to organize the men into the United Mine Workers of America, no matter who is with it or against it.

At the conclusion of the address Delegate Gori, District 12, moved that a rising vote of thanks be tendered Mother Jones. The motion was seconded and carried unanimously.

[Photographs, paragraph breaks and emphasis added.]

SOURCE
Proceedings of 25th Consecutive & 2nd Biennial Convention
of the United Mine Workers of America, Vol I
Indianapolis, Indiana
January 18 to Feb 1, 1916, Inclusive
https://books.google.com/books?id=MvREAQAAMAAJ
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=MvREAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcove...
ELEVENTH DAY-AFTERNOON SESSION about 1:30 p.m., Saturday, January 29th,
Speech of Mother Jones, (Part I)
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=MvREAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcove...
Speech of Mother Jones, (Part II)
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=MvREAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcove...

IMAGES
Mother Jones on Cover of United Mine Workers Journal of Jan 21, 1915,
Repaired by JtC, Thank you, Johnny!
http://books.google.com/books/reader?id=PxZQAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover...
Mother Jones with Strikers Children
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/jones/autobiography/autobiography...
Martin Irons, 1886
http://knowyourgovernment.wordpress.com/2009/04/10/know-your-labor-leade...

See also:

Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Speaks: "Thank God I have lived to be a grandmother in agitation." by JayRaye
http://caucus99percent.com/content/hellraisers-journal-mother-jones-spea...

Mother Jones, William B Willson & Arnot Strike
http://www.blossburg.org/wb_wilson/thestory_4.htm

William B Wilson, President of District 2 UMWA
https://books.google.com/books?id=fteQsXRTcVoC&printsec=frontcover&sourc...

John P White
http://www.umwa.org/index.php?q=content/umwa-hall-presidents

Delegate Martin J Flyzik representing three Seattle Locals of District 10, Washington.
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=MvREAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcove...

Mother Jones marches to Hazleton with army of women.
And $10,000 for house for John Mitchell.
https://www.marxists.org/subject/women/authors/jones/ch11.htm

Nova Scotia, Westmoreland, the Southwest, Vancouver, West Virginia, Colorado and Ohio, strikes bitterly fought by the UMWA, 1912-1915. (not all of these strikes are mentioned here:)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Mine_Workers

Thomas Haggerty, of District 2, Pennsylvania
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=MvREAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcove...

March of the Mill Children
http://www.dailykos.com/news/TheMarchoftheMillChildren

John Brown
http://www.biography.com/people/john-brown-9228496

Debs on Martin Irons
https://www.marxists.org/archive/debs/works/1900/martinirons.htm

Sadly, behind a paywall: Appeal to Reason, My 11, 1907:
“The Grave of Martin Irons” by Mother Jones
(But this article will eventually find its way into Hellraisers Journal.)
https://www.newspapers.com/image/67586866/

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Fire in the Hole - Hazel Dickens