No matter what your fight don't be ladylike!
God Almighty made women
and the Rockefeller gang of thieves made the ladies.
-Mother Jones
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Friday October 22, 1915
Chicago, Illinois - Mother Jones and Boys' Brotherhood Republic
Today's
Chicago Daily Tribune is reporting that Mother Jones took some time out from her
mission of support for the Great Garment Strike in this city in order to accompany a group of young boys to a protest meeting before Judge Olson.
BOYS' 'MAYOR' PROTESTS TO
OLSON ON FINGERPRINTS.
-----
Calls on Judge, Hears Latter's View,
and Decides It's All Right-
"Mother" Jones Along.
-----
A dozen boys filed gravely into the chambers of Chief Justice Olson of the Municipal court yesterday and lined up in front of the judge's desk. Just behind them stood "Mother" Jones, who beamed through her spectacles and explained that she had come along to lend her moral support.
"We are from the Boys' Brotherhood Republic," said one sturdy youngster, "I'm Ralph Goodman, mayor, and we want to protest against this plan of yours to put the finger print system in the Boys' court. We don't believe a rogues' gallery for boys is the proper thing."
"I'm with you there," returned Judge Olson, "but we are not establishing any rogues' gallery. You boys have the wrong idea. We simply want to protect society from the vicious boy and the subnormal boy from himself. You ought not to be afraid to leave your finger prints anywhere, I'm not."
"Maybe that's right, huh?" observed Mayor Goodman, turning to his followers. They assented, agreed to help Judge Olson establish the proposed farm colony for vicious and subnormal boys, and departed well content.
-----
~~~~~~~~~~
SOURCE
Chicago Daily Tribune
(Chicago, Illinois)
-Oct 22, 1915
https://www.newspapers.com/...
IMAGE
Mother Jones, Boston Globe,
Jan 30, 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/...
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On the Whereabouts of Mother Jones before Coming to Chicago
Where was Mother before arriving in Chicago on Saturday October 16th? This is a question I have attempted to answer with limited success. My best guess is that she came either from New York City or from Washington, D. C.
On October 1, 1915, she was in Washington D. C. according to
the Chicago
Day Book:
http://www.newspapers.com/...
On October 8th, the President of the United Mine Workers mailed a letter to her at Washington.
Kansas City, Mo.,
Coates House,
October 8 1915.
Mother Jones,
Washington, D. C.
Dear Mother Jones:
I am in receipt of your favor of the 4th inst., containing money order for $37.45 from Warren Ohio meeting. I am forwarding it to Secretary Green's office with the necessary instructions.
I will give the matter referred to in your letter my thoughtful consideration. I have a committee in Colorado now dealing with the internal matters that have been so annoying to us for some time.
I see by press reports that Lawson has been given his liberty. I suppose this means that he will not be tried again.
In my judgment, it would be unwise for you to go to Cumberland, B.C. at this time, as things generally throughout Canada are in bad shape and I do not believe you could do much to help the situation there just now.
With best wishes, I am
Yours very truly,
John P. White
President.
She often stopped over in Washington where Terence V. Powderly and his wife
kept a room for her in
their home in Washington D. C. in WDC.
On October 10th the
New York Times has her in New York City working with the local Socialists:
http://www.newspapers.com/...
While in Chicago, it appears that she stayed at the Morrison Hotel, for that is where William B. Wilson sent the following reply to her regarding a request for the U.S. Department of Labor to investigate the garment workers' strike:
October 19, 1915
Mother Jones
Morrison Hotel
Chicago, Illinois
Do not deem it wise for the Department of Labor to investigate garment makers' strike at the same time that the City Council committee is making investigation. We have representatives of the Department quietly watching the situation in order that we may keep in touch with the developments.
W. B. Wilson
~~~~~~~~~~
SOURCE
The Correspondence of Mother Jones
-ed by Edward M. Steel
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985
https://books.google.com/...
IMAGES
John P White, UMWA
http://en.wikipedia.org/..._(unionist)
William B Wilson, UMWA,
Secretary of Labor
http://www.blossburg.org/
See also:
Mother Jones Invades Canada in June 1914
http://www.dailykos.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...
From the Vanguard of October 1915:
"Vancouver Island Strike Story" by George Pettigrew
https://www.marxists.org/...
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Mother Jones, Suffrage, Feminism, & the Struggles of Working Class Women
Mother Jones at Roosevelt, NJ, Jan 1915, from New York Tribune of Jan 22.
Shortly after the Roosevelt Massacre
`````
The following comment was left at yesterdays Hellraisers:
And women could not vote yet
But Mother Jones may have had controversial views on the suffragette movement.
She was right when she said; “you don’t need a vote to raise hell.” But voting was key.
[emphasis added]
A paragraph from the linked article states:
"Only in auxiliary statues? !!!
Yet, despite her radicalism, Mother Jones was no feminist. She did not support the suffrage movement, arguing that “you don’t need a vote to raise hell.” Though she was correct when she pointed out that the women of Colorado had the vote and failed to use it to prevent the appalling conditions that led to labor violence, this should not have negated women’s inherent right to a voice in government from one who had also frequently quoted the Declaration of Independence. Indeed, Mother Jones even argued that suffragists were naïve women who unwittingly acted as duplicitous agents of class warfare; she wrote in 1925 (after national suffrage had been achieved) that “the plutocrats have organized their women. They keep them busy with suffrage and prohibition and charity.”
More significantly, Mother Jones organized working class women only in auxiliary statues and adamantly maintained that—except when the union called—a woman’s place was in the home. Her ideals reflected her Catholic heritage, for she believed that working men should be paid well enough so that women could devote themselves exclusively to motherhood. It is not surprising, therefore, that Mother Jones was conspicuously absent from the leadership of the great strikes that involved large numbers of women, for example, the 1909 Garment Industry Strike and the Lawrence Textile Strike of 1912.
[Photograph added.]
Some of my thoughts on those two paragraphs:
"Only in
auxiliary statues" ? !!! Tell that to
Big Annie Clemenc or the
women at Ludlow!
The disrespect shown by that one word, "ONLY," to these courages working class women belies the class prejudice of the writer of these paragraphs!
And to pull out two strikes where Mother was not active as proof that she did not care about working class women, is so ridiculous that no rebuttal should be necessary. The writer seems never to have heard of the Chicago Garment Workers Strike of 1915 or other such strikes of women workers where mother came to lend her voice to the cause.
In 1909, Mother was fighting for the cause of Mexican Revolutionaries imprisoned in the U. S.
In 1912, she was, at great risk to herself, organizing for the Western Federation of Miners in Montana and for the United Mine Workers of America. She was beloved by the wives, sisters, and daughters of the miners wherever she went as she rallied them to stand up and fight beside their men.
As to women's participation in the workplace-to retroactively apply modern values to the women of 100 years ago is simply ridiculous in the extreme. And furthermore, Mother Jones never said that women belonged exclusively at home raising children. She worked with other professional women organizers and journalist such Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (a working mother), Mary Heaton Vorse (another working mother), Emma F Langdon, etc.
But the reality for the vast majority of working class women was that the jobs available to them were miserable jobs at low pay, that they still had their housework waiting for them when they came home exhausted, that most of them preferred not to be forced by economic pressure into these miserable jobs, and that they would not be so forced into these miserable jobs if the husband and father made enough to support the family.
Then again, perhaps she was thinking of the husband and four little children that she lost, all within one month's time. Perhaps she would have loved nothing more than the job of caring for them had they not perished of yellow fever.
And yes, she was a strong Catholic. Unions, then and now, were/are open to people of all different faiths who have many different views on family life. Within the labor movement there should be nothing surprising about that.
My response to the comment:
Yes I do disagree with Mother on the subject of women's suffrage.
But to discuss her remarks apart from the context in which they were made is to miss a large part of the point that she was making.
She had come to New York fresh from the field of death and destruction in Colorado and when she went to talk to a group of upper class women, all that these upper class women wanted to talk to her about was Women's Suffrage.
Voting certainly was not key to the women and children of the Southern Colorado Coalfields.
The women already had the vote in Colorado, women were high up in the Democratic Party of Colorado. And what did it get them? They were massacred by the state militia under the control of Governor Ammons, Democrat of Colorado. Then their husbands, brothers and sons were persecuted under the rule of Governor Carlson, Republican of Colorado.
Under both Democrats and Republicans, the very good labor laws of Colorado were simply ignored by the coal operators for which the coal operators were not prosecuted, neither by the Republicans nor by Democrats.
Most of the strikers demands were already state law in Colorado, but unenforced. Had those laws simply been enforced, there would never have been a strike in the first place.
But rather than insisting that the coal operators follow the law and prosecuting and jailing those who refused to do so, Governor Ammons, Democrat of Colorado, had hundreds of striking miners rounded up and thrown into filthy jails by a militia that had become infested with company gunthugs.
Under the circumstances, to say that "voting was key" is an extremely simplistic analysis which ignores the realities that existed for the miners and their families in Southern Colorado Coalfields at the time that Mother made those statements.
The miners had for years, through their labor organizations, lobbied for justice. They had voted in elections for candidates they thot would support them, only to be betrayed by both parties. Is it any wonder then that Mother Jones was less than enthusiastic about voting as a means of remedy for inhumane conditions under which the miners, their wives and their children actually lived.
The upper class women of New York showed little interest in what Mother actually came to talk about, and instead, hounded her on the subject of suffrage. Considering where she came from and what she had witness of the lives of the miners' wives and children, is it any wonder that she lashed out at these women who were unwilling to even attempt to view the subject through the eyes of the miners and their families from the blood-soaked ground of Southern Colorado?
See also:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
To sum up:
Why should we care whether or not Mother Jones identified as a feminist 100 years ago? Feminism then and now, does not mean the same thing to all women. To the millionaire women feminism might look like one thing, to the working class women something else. The millionaire woman might be concerned with the "glass ceiling," while the working class woman might want the right to wear a hard hat and operate heavy equipment, and break down the doors blocking her entry into a construction union.
As to a working class woman's place- it was the view of Mother Jones that working class women belonged on the front lines of the the class struggle right beside their men:
No matter what your fight don't be ladylike! God Almighty made women and the Rockefeller gang of thieves made the ladies.
One's On The Way - The Muppets & Loretta Lynn
The girls in New York City they all march for women's lib
And Better Homes and Gardens shows the modern way to live
And the pill may change the world tomorrow but meanwhile today
Here in Topeka the flies are a buzzin'
The dog is a barkin' and the floor needs a scrubbin'
One needs a spankin' and one needs a huggin'
Lord, one's on the way
-Shel Silverstein
Bonus Song:
Coal Miners Daughter - Loretta Lynn
Well, I was born a coal miner's daughter,
In a cabin, on a hill in Butcher Holler,
We were poor, but we had love,
That's the one thing my daddy made sure of,
He shoveled coal to make a poor man's dollar.
-Lorretta Lynn
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