You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Friday October 30, 1903
Trinidad, Colorado - That Dangerous Woman Comes Bearing Trouble for 20,000 Miners
Of the many newspapers across the country which featured the story of Mother Jones delivering the strike authorization from John Mitchell to District 15 of the United Mine Workers of America, The Atlanta Constitution seems to have been the newspaper most alarmed by the news:
MOTHER JONES BEARS TROUBLE
She Takes Orders To Colorado For 20,000 Miners To Quit
We must note that this same newspaper does not at all concern itself with the high rate of death and injury to the miners, nor with the deplorable living conditions of the miners and their families in the company towns.
But the nation's miners and their struggle for justice abide ever first and foremost in the heart of Mother Jones. This poem was printed in the July 17, 1902 edition of the United Mine Workers Journal, a tribute to the beloved Miner's Angel:
MOTHER JONES
-
BY O. L. FORD
They've put an injunction on old Mother Jones.
The language so stuns
From the brave woman's tongue,
And her truth-telling words were so noisy in tones,
That they've tried the suppression of old Mother Jones.
The court has imprisoned old Mother Jones.
She raised such a rage
About starvation wage,
The coal barons' greed and the coal miners' moans,
That they had to get rid of poor Mother Jones.
Do they think an injunction will gag Mother Jones?
It will certainly fail-
Though they've put her in jail
There are thousands to talk for old Mother Jones.
To thus make a martyr of old Mother Jones,
Will encourage the strife
And will quicken the life
Of the struggling workers fighting the drones
Who put an injunction on old Mother Jones.
For the words and the works of old Mother Jones
For downtrodden men
Will he eulogized when
The earth has enshrouded her weary old bones,
And a monument built for old Mother Jones.
Then the wonderful spirit of old Mother Jones
May march up and down,
Like the soul of John Brown,
Till justice shall vanquish our burdens and groans.
And oppression is buried like old Mother Jones.
The injunction refers to her struggles last year in West Virginia with Judge Jackson.
SOURCES
The Atlanta Constitution
(Atlanta, Georgia)
-of Oct 29, 1903
Typographical Journal, Volume 21, p.90
International Typographical Union, 1902
http://books.google.com/...
Mother Jones
The Most Dangerous Woman in America
-by Elliott J Gorn
NY, 2001
Photo: Great Thoughts Treasury
http://www.greatthoughtstreasury.com/...
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Thursday October 30, 1913
Trinidad, Colorado - General Chase, and his officers due to arrive tomorrow.
We are hearing reports that General Chase will travel to Trinidad in a special train car with his officers, and will arrive tomorrow. Accompanying the General will be Major Hamrock, Major Edward Boughton, Captain Danks and Captain Van Cise, along with several other officers. Major Boughton, an attorney for the Cripple Creek Mine Owners Association, will serve as judge advocate of the militia.
The Governor has instructed the militia to play a neutral role in the struggle between the strikers and the coal operators. Both sides are to be disarmed. State statute forbids the importation of strike breakers from outside the state, and the Governor has instructed the militia to uphold state law in that regard.
SOURCE
Out of the Depths
The Story of John R. Lawson, a Labor Leader
-by Barron B. Beshoar
(1st ed 1942)
CO, 1980
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Wednesday October 30, 2013
More on Mother Jones and John Brown:
Per Elliot J Gorn from the above source:
The comparison [in the poem above] to John Brown must have been especially gratifying. During her time in West Virginia, indeed, during her whole career, Mother Jones made frequent references to the abolitionist crusade against slavery. It was said that she carried a worn volume of Wendell Phillips's antislavery speeches everywhere. But John Brown, the great martyr to the cause, was her favorite...
Indeed, she was especially proud when journalists compared her to the likes of Brown and Phillips, and beginning in West Virginia, she made labor's old analogy between chattel slavery and wage slavery explicit. The comparison could be dismissive of the horrific exploitation of African Americans, implying that their suffering had been little different from that of modern-day white workers, Yet black miners appreciated Mother Jones's references to the slaves' plight. They "lustily cheered" her and called out, "Hit 'em again, Mother Jones!" and "Tell it to 'em again." The war against slavery was a theme to which she returned over and over.
Note: For the quotes from black miners who shouted out during a speech by Mother Jones, Gorn uses as his source: the
Boston Herald of Sept 11, 1904
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John Brown's Body-Gloria Jane
He captured Harper’s Ferry, with his nineteen men so few,
And frightened "Old Virginny" till she trembled thru and thru;
They hung him for a traitor, themselves the traitor crew,
But his soul is marching on.
-William W. Patton