Saturday April 1, 1916
Indianapolis, Indiana - John M. O'Neill Address Convention of United Mine Workers

John M. O'Neill, of the Western Federation of Miners, was invited to address the twenty-fifth convention of the United Mine Workers of America which took place from January 18th to February 1st. The listeners where so inspired by the stirring message delivered that they arose spontaneously from their seats to give the speaker a hearty round of applause. We are pleased to present Brother O'Neill's speech in full:

President White — I am going to ask the convention to hear a few words from a brother who is here — Brother John M. O'Neill, of the Western Federation of Miners and editor of the Trinidad Free Press.

ADDRESS OF JOHN M. O'NEILL.

Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, and Delegates of the Convention: I desire to express my thanks to your president for the honor extended to me in addressing this body. I have listened with a great deal of interest to the discussion of questions of interest, but I must say to you I deplore deeply the acrimonious discussion, the words that have thorns in them that leave wounds and scars on the memory of men. Hatchets and scalping knives should be buried for if there ever was a time in the history of your organization when the men of the mines should stand shoulder to shoulder that time is now.

Your president made a statement a few days ago that your organization was developing men faster than the organization could create jobs. Let me say to you now that no man in the labor movement will climb to the top who makes speeches a thousand miles long and two inches deep. I want to congratulate the convention for its magnanimity in passing a resolution which provides for the building of a monument at Ludlow. That monument when erected and dedicated will speak eloquently to the men of the southern coal fields of Colorado; but it will do more than that, it will serve notice on 26 Broadway, New York, that the United Mine Workers of America propose to stay in Colorado until the last hated vestige of feudalism is swept from the Siberia of America. When we note the conditions of labor throughout the length and breadth of this land; when we see manhood surrender independence; when we see men bidding for dishonor to appease the pangs of hunger, and when we see the lines of care written on the innocent brow of childhood, is it any wonder that we sometimes hear of men banding together and waving the gory banner of anarchy in defiance of law and public peace? Is it any wonder that we sometimes hear of machines of destruction placed in close proximity to mansions of moneyed kings, and princes? Is it any wonder we sometimes behold the columns of the public press crimsoned with the deeds of men made desperate by hunger and want?

WE NEVER FORGET
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As long as monopoly lives and reigns in this land to trample under foot the struggling victims of penury, just so long will the arm of the slave be raised to resist the oppressor. There are two kinds of anarchies in this land of ours today: the anarchy of the rich and the anarchy of the poor. Anarchy in broadcloth towers above the law and escapes with impunity; anarchy in rags the law reaches, condemns and convicts.

The aim of the labor movement is to remove the cause which breeds anarchy, and then there will be no more Pittsburgh insurrections; there will be no more riots at Homestead, Pa.; there will be no more strikers shot down by deputized thug at Lattimer; there will be no more bull pens in Colorado and Idaho; there will be no more gunmen in West Virginia, and never again in the history of this country will a State of this Union disgrace itself by putting a Mother Jones behind the walls of a military stockade.

When the slave of toil and the captain of industry become engaged in a death grapple it is customary for your organization to send its representatives to the scene of conflict, and when your representatives arrive there the frothing enemies of organized labor, speaking through a venal press, brand your representatives as undesirable citizens and dangerous agitators. I want to say to you this afternoon that I bow in reverence to the agitator. I love the meaning of the word agitator, because it warms the blood and quickens the heartbeat of the world in its onward march toward the goal of the industrial democracy. I love to hear the song of the rippling brook and the splash of the rushing river as its waters flow on toward the mighty ocean, but I am mute in the presence of the stagnant pool or the dead sea. The agitators have lived in every age of the world's progress, and the names of the agitators of the past emblazon the pages of history with a luster that shall ever shine until time shall be lost in eternity.

Christ was an agitator and he paid the penalty on Calvary, but the doctrines which He preached revolutionized the religion of the world and the Christian temples today stand as monuments in memory of the agitator who was born in a stable at Bethlehem, wept in the Garden of Gethsemane and expiated His life on a cross amid the sneers and scoffs of a howling mob. John Brown, Phillips and Garrison were agitators, but the sentiments which flowed from their lips inflamed a nation to rise in its might and strike from the limbs of the black man the chains and shackles of chattel slavery. The agitator through all the centuries of time has blazed the trail for a higher and grander civilization, and in the splendid future which must one day dawn upon the world the agitator shall occupy a place second to none of the illustrious men in whom this old earth has been so fruitful. High above kings and warriors, high above the brilliancy and magnificence of wealth, high above the myrtle of the imperial Caesar, fame shall place its wreath of immortality on the brow of the man who spoke for men, and nations shall yet salute in him the hero who did valiant service for humanity and for God.

Organized labor, my friends, recognizes that the great mass of the people are in chains. Organized labor is recognizing the fact that there is no milepost in the pathway of our civilization where unionism shall stand still. Organized labor must either advance or retrograde. Unionism must be able to grapple with the questions and the conditions which confront us or go down in ruin, shattered into fragments as a result of its weakness to measure steel with the giant combinations of the twentieth century. Organized labor must be able to meet the Napoleons of commercial greed and record upon the pages of future history the Waterloo of moneyed anarchy. Organized labor has been attempting to realize its dream and its hope through a system of organization which has wiped the sneer from the lips of wealth. We are beginning to realize that the superstructure of unionism as constituted in the past has been built on a weak foundation, the walls of whose defense must fall and crumble into atoms before the grape and canister of corporate power.

Why have the organizations in the past been shattered into fragments? Why have the Davids of the common people been unable to meet the Goliaths of capital in combat and bury in an unhallowed grave the despotism of a moneyed autocracy? Why has labor been unable to plant the banner of liberty on the shattered battlements of entrenched capital and still the wails of misery that come to us from countless hovels in this so-called land of the free and home of the brave? Why does American manhood and womanhood throw away their independence and kneel at the feet of the exploiter begging for a pittance to support a living death? Why does old age totter to the poorhouses and spend its declining years in loneliness and misery? Why does virtue hide its cheek behind the gaudy walls of shame? And why does childhood wither and decay in the poisonous atmosphere of the factory? Simply because the labor movement of this country has been divided and scattered into regiments, divided upon the economic field and divided at the ballot box on the day of election.

The time has come in the history of the labor movement of this country and throughout the world when the scattered regiments of labor must come together into one great invincible army, using its united economic strength and political power to overthrow the despotism of organized greed and build upon the ruins of a hated profit system a real republic in whose shelter there can live no master and no slave.

Under the present dehumanized situation the earth is deluged with human misery and wretchedness and the sky of life for millions of human beings is shrouded in the gloom of hopeless despair. We can hear the exultant shout of multi-millionaires mocking the misery of impoverished millions and we can behold the bloodless lips of plutocracy curling in sneering derision as the pleading voice for justice is heard in every nation on earth. We can see the little boys and girls of our land, snatched from the gardens of childhood and imprisoned in the bastiles of mill and factory. We can see the maid stealing out at night with pallid lips and laying the flowers of her chastity at the feet of the wealthy libertine. We can see the red demon of war crimson the sky of Europe with its flames, and we can see the battlefield strewn with dead as human beings grapple with each other to establish markets for the merchants and the pirates of the twentieth century. And when we see all these we are forced to explain in the inspiring language of the orator of old: "Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God."

We want to see a civilization where man shall be no longer on his knees but stand upon his feet, his head erect, the noblest work of God. We want to see a civilization that will entwine upon the cross which labor has borne to Calvary the evergreen of hope, and we want to hear the music of that glad morning that shall herald to the living and to the generations that are yet to come the dream of all the ages, the dream of poets, sages and philosophers, the dream of that new day that shall usher in the brotherhood of man.

The entire delegation arose, without any formal motion being offered, and tendered a vote of thanks to the speaker.

President White — I know I voice the sentiments of the delegates when I say we are greatly impressed by the eloquent words of Brother O'Neill, and we shall always be glad to receive him in our councils and our conventions.

At 5 o'clock the convention was adjourned to 9 o'clock a. m., Tuesday, February 1, 1916.

[Photographs and emphasis added.]

SOURCE
Proceedings of TheTwenty-Fifth Consecutive and Second Biennial
Convention of the United Mine Workers of America
Held in the City of Indianapolis, Indiana
January 18 to February 1, 1916, Inclusive Vol I
-United Mine Workers of America
Indianapolis, 1916
https://books.google.com/books?id=MvREAQAAMAAJ
Twelfth Day, Afternoon Session
Monday, January 31, 1916 at 1:30 pm-
Convention called to order with President White in the chair:
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=jV5ZAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcove...
John M. O'Neill Speaks
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=jV5ZAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcove...

IMAGES
John M O'Neill, Editor of Trinidad Free Press
(Former editor of Miners Magazine.
Note: ELF has his name incorrectly stated as James.)
http://www.rebelgraphics.org/wfmhall/langdon16.html
The Masses June 1914 Ludlow Pancoast
http://dlib.nyu.edu/themasses/books/masses039/6
Mother Jones, Military Bastile, Walsenburg Cellar Cell, Colorado, 1914
https://archive.org/stream/ludlowmassacrere00finkrich#page/84/mode/1up
Ludlow, To Our Martyrs, UMWJ, Apr 15, 1915
http://books.google.com/books/reader?id=PxZQAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover...

Note: Mother Jones also took part in the convention:

Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Storms Stage at United Mine Workers Convention, Ends Bitter Debate
http://caucus99percent.com/content/hellraisers-journal-mother-jones-stor...

Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones at UMWA Convention; V.P. Hayes, "You can't stop her from talking."
http://caucus99percent.com/content/hellraisers-journal-mother-jones-umwa...

Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones at UMWA Convention; V.P. Hayes, "There is only one Mother Jones."
http://caucus99percent.com/content/hellraisers-journal-mother-jones-umwa...

Hellraisers Journal: A Poetical Tribute to Mother Jones as "The Peacemaker" at Miners' Convention
http://caucus99percent.com/content/hellraisers-journal-poetical-tribute-...

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

Hellraisers Journal: God Almighty wants me to live long enough to raise hell with you. -Mother Jones
http://caucus99percent.com/content/hellraisers-journal-god-almighty-want...

John McCutcheon Sings at Ludlow Monument

Colorado Strike Song
Lyrics by Frank Hayes
http://www.folkarchive.de/werecomi.html

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tft79_HeKmk width:500 height:315]

The Ludlow Massacre
Lyrics by Woody Guthrie
http://woodyguthrie.org/Lyrics/Ludlow_Massacre.htm

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtnHMKW0oZk width:560 height:315]