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Saturday February 10, 1906
Greensboro, North Carolina - Mother Jones Interviewed, Tells of Children in the Mills

The following is an interview with Mother Jones which was published in the February 8th edition of the Greensboro Daily Industrial News:

NO STRIKE COMING SAYS MOTHER JONES
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Noted Socialist Thinks General Uprising
Will Be Avoided by Both Sides.
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SPEAKS OF CHILD LABOR AND
ECONOMIC CONDITIONS
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Amusing Anecdotes Related By Her Show Her Fearlessness and
Sense of Humor as Well as Her Lack of "Respect of Persons."
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Mother Jones leading the March of the Mill Children, 1903
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"There will be no general strike," said "Mother" Jones to a Daily Industrial News reporter.

This was apropos of the prophesied strike which John Mitchel [Mitchell], Head of the Federation of Labor Unions [American Federation of Labor*], says will tie up most of the industries of the country before long.

["Mother" Jones went on:]

John Mitchel does not want the strike...and neither does Roosevelt, and between the two of them it won't come off. You see Mitchel knows just what misery the strike would entail, and he will avoid it unless he is pushed into the thing. But the big strike will come some day; that is inevitable. Present-day economics will bring it about surely, though it may be delayed for some time.

"How do economic conditions here compare with those in the North?" was asked.

[Said Mother Jones:]

There is no real difference in my opinion...Down here in your own mills the outward conditions are much better, but it all amounts to the same thing-the deadening of the mentality and the deterioration of the body. Whenever I see a person who has spent his or her life in a mill I always sigh for the intellect that is lost to the world for human greed.

That Mother Jones is no respecter of persons is shown by a story she tells of a time when she was arrested for organizing a strike.

[Said Mother Jones:]

I was taken before the Judge...but when I kept calling him "Mr. Judge" when I spoke to him the clerk said to me, "when you address the court you must say 'your honor.' "

"And who is the court?" said I.

"The bench," said the man.

"Oh, you mean that little man behind the counter," said I.

"Yes," said the man, "you must call him 'your honor.' "

"Well, said I, "I'll wait till I finish this deal with him, and then I'll see whether or not he's honorable."

Apropos of the lecture which "Mother" Jones will deliver tonight, in Labor Union Hall, she said:

My talk will be confined to the child labor question which is now the most important on in the South.

"How did you come to be interested on this particular branch of economics?" was asked.

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Babies in the Mills
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[Responded "Mother" Jones:]

It was when I was myself a factory hand...It was in Massachusetts where there was a great deal of child labor-and still is. I saw there children dwarfed mentally and physically, shriveled and old before their time-and with an old age such as ought to come to no one who lives aright. I saw how they toiled and toiled to earn scarcely enough for their daily bread, and how they lived always in deadly terror of losing that sacred thing called a "job."

I saw their terror-saw how when the inspector came a concealed button was touched under the manager's desk which rang bells in the work room. I saw how every child who received that unspoken order ran for life to one of the many closets there and was locked up and hidden until the inspector had passed. I saw how-when they were allowed to come from hiding each was in deadly fear that she had done something that was to cost her her place, and I heard their frightened questions, "Oh, am I to lose my job?-am I to lose my job?"

The day I went to work in that mill I saw such an innocent looking little child at work that I was drawn to her and spoke to her, asking her when she had come to work.

"I only came yesterday," she responded.

"And how much are they going to pay you? I asked.

Dollar and Half a Week.

"I don't know, answered the child, "but I hope-oh, I hope they will give me a dollar and a half a week. I'll work very hard to try and deserve it for mamma is sick, and we need the money very much."

[Said Mother Jones, with the deepest pity in her voice:]

"The next day...the poor child was taken home with her hand off at the wrist. It is economic conditions which make such things as these possible that I am fighting.

"But, Mother Jones," said the reporter, "I can understand how you can awaken these vast bodies of workers and rouse them to the striking pitch, but how are they controlled? Do you not find it impossible to keep them within the lines you wish to draw? Are you not compelled to let them go their own gait after you have started them?"

Mother Jones smiled her merry smile, "Not a bit of it!" she said emphatically-

I can control the biggest army of workmen that ever gathered together with a lift of my hand. It is confidence in one. They trust me for I have never betrayed them. If a person ever betrays them they never forget it and never trust that person again.

The reporter looked with amazement at this diminutive snowy-haired woman who commands armies with a wave of her hand. But a deep scrutiny of the sweet, determined face gave a clue to the secret of her power. Is not this the strength of the "perfect love that casteth out fear?" It is certainly not the strength of intellectual dominance, brute force, or even magnetism, but is a personal example of the keeping of the promise that if we have faith-which is Mother Jones' possession in perfection-we shall be able to handle serpents or tread on the scorpion unharmed.

[Mother Jones said:]

I never saw but one reporter I had no use for. He was one of the supercilious kind, and he looked me up and down very patronizingly and said , "Mrs. Jones, can you tell why you took up this career?" and I [said?] "Reporter, can you tell me why you took up your career?" His reply was "I took it up for the good it would do me." Then I said, "And I took up my career for the good it would do humanity. And that is the difference between us. I follow my path to benefit the human race, and you follow yours to benefit the hog."

[Photographs added.]

* Note: Samuel Gompers, not John Mitchell, is head of the American Federation of Labor. John Mitchell is president of the United Mine Workers of America. The U. M. W. is affiliated with the A. F. of L.

SOURCE
Daily Industrial News
(Greensboro, North Carolina)
-Feb 8 1906
https://www.newspapers.com/image/63398296/

IMAGES
Mother Jones March of the Mill Children, 1903
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2015649893/
Child Labor, Lewis W Hine, Roanoke, VA, Cotton Mills, May 1911
(Note: this photo is used here to represent the children described working with in the mills of Massachusetts.)
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/ncl2004002872/PP/

See also:

Hellraisers Journal: John Mitchell Again Elected President of the United Mine Workers of America
-by JayRaye
http://caucus99percent.com/content/hellraisers-journal-john-mitchell-aga...

Hellraisers Journal: Ban on Mother Jones in Forsyth County Aimed at "Women Agitators For Anything!"
-by Jayraye
http://caucus99percent.com/content/hellraisers-journal-ban-mother-jones-...

Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones with her snowy hair "is the very ideal of beautiful old age."
-by JayRaye
http://caucus99percent.com/content/hellraisers-journal-mother-jones-her-...

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

DK tag: march of the mill children (sorry for the 2 different tags, my bad)
http://www.dailykos.com/news/marchofthemillchildren

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We Will Sing One Song - Six Feet In the Pine
Lyrics by Joe Hill
http://www.folkarchive.de/wewill.html

We will sing one song of the children in the mills
They're taken from playgrounds and schools
In tender years made to go the pace that kills
In the sweatshops, 'mong the looms and the spools
Then we'll sing one song of the One Big Union Grand
The hope of the toiler and slave
It's coming fast; it is sweeping sea and land
To the terror of the grafter and the knave