Monday May 15, 1916
Chanute, Kansas - Mother Jones Passing Through on Way to Kansas City

From The Chanute Daily Tribune of May 13th:

"MOTHER JONES" WAS HERE TODAY
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SHE DOESN'T LOOK AS RADICAL AS SHE TALKS.
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Woman Who Appealed to President
and Senate to End Colorado Mine
Strike War Looked Peaceful
Enough In Repose.
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"Mother " Jones, who sprang into national prominence two years ago, when she acted as peacemaker in the Colorado mine strike war, was in the city this afternoon on her way from Coffeyville to Kansas City.

[She said:]

I was in Coffeyville to attend a meeting of trades unions...I try to go, wherever there is a chance for a good fight against high-class burglars, and I am kept pretty busy most of the time.

There have been things since the Colorado horror that were just as bad-the Youngstown, O., affair was one of them. We are making progress, though.

There never was a time when there was as much discontent among the people who work, however. There are several reasons for this-the high cost of living, the introduction of machinery which increases production from which the toiler has no share in the profits, and the uneven manner in which things are distributed.

I visited a meat packing plant in Chicago recently where 150 girls had revolted because of the conditions under which they had to work. It was pitiful. They received $1.15 a day-really, $1.05, because they each paid 10 cents for car fare. Their work was such that at the end of a few years it left them bent and bowed, their usefulness and attractiveness gone, so that they were merely ready for the scrap heap of humanity.

Chicago has its social settlement workers, of course, but they never take up the fight for such girls. I have utter contempt for these peace lifters. They go to Europe on peace ships and come back and charge the people for telling them the pope would like to have the war end, and other things we already know.

We hear a great deal about law and order, but when we come to examine it we find it is merely a weapon with which the powerful oppress the weak. They use the money they have stolen from the toilers to hire men to murder them and bloodhounds to chase them.

What we need is an opportunity for everyone to have a good home and a chance for happiness. Surely that is not too much to ask.

"Mother" Jones does not look as radical as all this sounds. She was handsomely gowned in a blue figured silk waist and black skirt, with a flat hat covered with purple pansies, the colors bringing out the blue in her eyes, which are the most interesting features of her countenance. They flashed and sparkled when she got to talking, her speech being vehement and rapid, so that it was difficult sometimes to understand all she said.

Sitting to herself in the car, though, reading the newspaper, no one would have thought she was the woman who figured in such stirring scenes as those at Ludlow, appealing to President Wilson to put a stop to the bloodshed and then influencing the senate to order an investigation.

"I am as much opposed to pie-hunters as I am to uplifters," she said, when she was asked if she had any official title.

I have never wanted any kind of office. All I ask is to be left free to pitch in wherever I find anything to do.

[Photograph added.]

SOURCE
The Chanute Daily Tribune
(Chanute, Neoaho County, Kansas)
-May 13, 1916
https://www.newspapers.com/image/57837668/

IMAGES
UMWJ, Feb 10, 1916, Cover, Mother Jones, TVP, Pres White
Mother Mary Harris Jones, Text from Chanute KS, May 13, 1916
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=NQpQAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcove...
https://www.newspapers.com/image/57837668/
Mother Mary Harris Jones, Decatur Herald IL, May 14, 1916
https://www.newspapers.com/image/87746467/

See also:

"WE NEVER FORGET April 20, 1914 The Ludlow Massacre" -by JayRaye
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/4/20/1083217/-WE-NEVER-FORGET-April-2...

"WE NEVER FORGET: The Youngstown Massacre of January 7, 1916" -by JayRaye
http://caucus99percent.com/content/we-never-forget-youngstown-massacre-j...

Mill Mother's Lament
Lyrics by Ella May Wiggins
http://www.protestsonglyrics.net/Labor_Union_Songs/Mill-Mothers-Lament.p...