You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Tuesday March 31, 1914
Walsenburg, Colorado - Mother Jones Smuggles a Letter out of Military Bastile
Hellraisers has received a copy of a communication from Mother Jones to the outside world. The Miners' Angel is being held captive in a cold cellar cell in Walsenburg by the State of Colorado. In the letter, smuggled out of the Military Bastile, she appeals to the nation and to her friend General Francisco Villa to be remembered in her "under ground cell surrounded with sewer rats, tinhorn soldiers and other vermin."
General Francisco Villa, Friend of Mother Jones
Walsenburg, Colo.
Military Bastile
March 31, 1914
To My Friends and the Public Generally:
I am being held a prisoner incommunicado in a damp, underground cell, in the basement of a military bullpen at Walsenburg, Colorado. Have been here since 5:30 a.m. of the 23rd of March, when I was taken from the train by armed soldiers as I was passing through Walsenburg. I have discovered what appears to be an opportunity to smuggle a letter out of prison, and shall attempt to get this communication by the armed guards which day and night surround me (me, a white-haired old woman eighty-two years of age).
I want to say to the public that I am an American citizen. I have never broken a law in my life, and I claim the right of an American citizen to go where I please so long as I do not violate the law. The courts of Las Animas and Huerfano are open and unobstructed in the transaction of business, yet Governor Ammons and his Peabody appointee, General Chase, refuse to carry me before any court, and refuse to make any charge against me. I ask the press to let the nation know of my treatment, and to say to my friends, whom, thank God, I number by the thousands, throughout the United States and Mexico, that not even my incarceration in a damp, underground dungeon will make me give up the fight in which I am engaged for liberty and for the rights of the working people.
Of course, I long to be out of prison. To be shut from the sunlight is not pleasant, but John Bunyan, John Brown and others were kept in Jail quite a while, and I shall stand firm. To be in prison is no disgrace. In all my strike experiences I have seen no horrors equal to those perpetrated by General Chase and his corps of Baldwin-Feltz detectives that are now enlisted in the militia. My God--when is it to stop? I have only to close my eyes to see the mourning of the broken hearts and the wailing of the funeral dirge, while the cringing politicians whose sworn duty is to protect the lives and liberty of the people crawl subserviently before the national burglars of Wall Street who are today plundering and devastating the State of Colorado economically, financially, politically and morally.
Let the nation know, and especially let my friend General Francisco Villa know, that the great United States of America, which is demanding of him that he release the traitors he has placed under arrest, is now holding Mother Jones incommunicado in an under ground cell surrounded with sewer rats, tinhorn soldiers and other vermin.
Mother Jones
[As written, without correction; paragraph break added.]
Mother Jones is not forgotten in her cold cellar cell, the same damp cell which led to the death of striking miner Kostas Marcos. She was remembered in the March 26th edition of
The Voice of the People through the poetry of Covington Hall:
SOURCES
The Correspondence of Mother Jones
-ed by Edward M Steel
U of Pittsburgh Press, 1985
Mother Jones Speaks
-ed by Philip S Foner
NY, 1983
The Voice of the People
"Owned by the Rebel [IWW] Lumberjacks of Dixie"
(New Orleans, Louisiana)
-of Mar 26, 1914
pdf! https://libcom.org/...
Photos:
1). General Francisco Villa
https://www.facebook.com/...
2). "The Soul of Mother Jones" by Covington Hall
https://www.facebook.com/...
Note: Both photos and the one below are from:
Facebook-Mother Jones Lives, which I cannot recommend enough.
They are doing fantastic work to keep Mother Jones in our memory.
https://www.facebook.com/...
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Monday March 31, 2014
Another Poem for Mother Jones written by Henry M. Tichenor:
Mother Jones Lives gives the date for publication of this poem as February 1914. However, I could not verify that date. I found a book of poetry by Tichenor which included this poem, dated May 1914:
Rhymes of the Revolution
pdf! http://debs.indstate.edu/...
The Tailors Journal published the poem in its edition of June 1914:
http://books.google.com/...
(Search preview with "Tichenor" and choose p.27)
And Utah Phillips and Rosalie Sorrels recorded a song based on this poem
on their album "The Long Memory."
Red House Records,
http://www.redhouserecords.com/...
Photo: "Charge On Mother Jones"
https://www.facebook.com/...
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The Red Flag - Songs of Irish Labor
With head uncovered swear we all
To bear it onward till we fall;
Come dungeons dark or gallows grim,
This song shall be our parting hymn.
Then raise the scarlet standard high.
Within its shade we live and die,
Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer,
We'll keep the red flag flying here.
-Jim Connell
This song dedicated to striking miner Kostas Markos who died as result of being held in the cold, damp, cellar cell in Walsenburg, a martyr of the Colorado Coalfield Strike of 1913-14.
WE NEVER FORGET
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