Coal Miners Strikes

Hellraisers Journal: God Almighty wants me to live long enough to raise hell with you. -Mother Jones

“God Almighty wants me to live long enough to raise hell with
you and make a man out of you instead of a thief.”
-Mother Jones to a West Virginia mine owner.

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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.

Mother Jones Speaks to United Mine Workers Convention, Part II
January 29, 1916, in Indianapolis, Indiana
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Mother Jones UMWJ, Jan 21, 1915.png

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.”