You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Wednesday February 22, 1905
The Great State of Illinois: Mother Jones Travels & Speaks on Unionism & Socialism
Since she participated in the Chicago
Conference of Industrial Unionist,
Hellraisers Journal has been keeping track of Mother Jones as she travels throughout Illinois speaking on
Unionism and Socialism. We find that she has given speeches in Freeport, Rock Island, Jacksonville, Pawnee, Decatur, Pana, and in Herrin, Carterville and Marion of Williamson County. In each of these places she is described as an inspiring speaker, her passion for the welfare of the working people not being the least bit lessened by her grandmotherly appearance.
We offer, today, two descriptions of her speeches in Illinois. The first was given in Rock Island on January 12th, and the second on February 14th in Decatur.
From the Rock Island Argus of January 13, 1905:
LIFE IS A HOLDUP
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Man's fight Against Man Curse of Race,
Declares "Mother" Mary Jones.
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"Mother" Mary Jones declares life in the present day is a game of holdup more desperately played with each succeeding year. One man trying to defeat the aims of his neighbor-that is the real curse of the human race. But the conflict of the century is between the classes, wealth and labor. Mrs. Jones declared, and it centers about control of the tools that the worker operates, the tools that he made, but does not own, the tools that he operates that others into whose faces he may never have looked may live on in luxury and idleness.
"Mother" Jones calls a spade a spade. She admits that possibly she oversteps the proprieties occasionally in her platform addresses but she is sincere. If she says a harsh thing about some people she does not regret having done so. She means every word she utters. She puts fervor into her words. She is an actress. She is a leader-not of women, but of men. She talks to the men as though she were one of them. She tells them some plain facts, as she terms them, but she says they are deserving of all of them. There were many women in the audience that greeted the lecturer at the Young Men's Christian association auditorium last evening.
Women Should Get In the Fight.
Mrs. Jones is passed middle life. She is a frail grayhaired little woman. She would fit admirably in a sewing circle of the neighborhood grandmas. She has a peaceful face, a pleasing voice, and in ordinary conversation does not make herself conspicuous. It is when she comes before an audience and gets down deep into the cause in which she has labored since young womanhood that one begins to see the "Mother" Jones of whom he has been reading about these years in the newspapers in connection with the strikes over the country. "Mother" Jones maintains a woman has no right to take a back seat to a man. Woman is as strong as man, mentally and otherwise.
She recalled when she was denied admittance to the meetings of the union. The men laughed at the idea of a weak little person in petticoats entering the sacred precincts of their union. But she and her sisters kept hammering on the door until they were allowed to enter. They have been in since, and she thought the men were glad they opened the doors to their sisters. The women gained their point without a vote-simply by persistent effort. The men had the ballot, the ballot that selected presidents, and governors, and other officers down to the town clerk. But the men, "Mother" Jones said, did not know how to use the ballot. Give woman the same privilege and see what she would do. She would bring about a change in this country.
Bitter Factory Experience.
Mrs. Jones, in her younger days worked in the factories. she retains bitter remembrance of those days, apparently, for she went into a passion while speaking of the cruelties practiced on the children that are employed in the sweat shops in the big cities. She put in 12 hours a day. She had suffered, as only those who have been through the mill can appreciate. She said the men who owned these establishments were murderers. She would tell them so to their faces. She had told them. She did not fear them. They were the ones who were in fear.
They did not want the public light to shine on the interior of their shops. These children worked for 19 cents a day. Mrs. Jones said, and on Sunday they went to Sunday school and heard their teacher tell how happy they should be and how grateful they should be to their employers for furnishing them an opportunity to gain honorable livelihood, concluding with a request for 5 cents each from the little ones to educate the heathen Chinese. Mrs. Jones said the heathens were over here. We ought to educate our own instead of going across the seas to spread our philanthropy and religion.
Capital Rampant Mad.
Mrs. Jones said capital was rampant mad. The tension tightened more daily. Apparently the country was running on as smoothly as ever is did, but under the surface there was a current in which human blood was being wrung. It was a battle to the death. The cry was for dividends. There must be dividends, say the men living a thousand miles away from the factories, maintaining homes costing thousands per month. There must be dividends, even if the children of the worker go without clothing to protect their little bones through the winter. The man away off in the mansion knew nothing about the suffering of the children of his worker. He did not want to hear about it. He had trouble of his own.
No one had a right to own a machine but the worker. Mrs. Jones held. The worker talked of his job, she said. "Where does he get the idea that he owns the job?" the speaker inquired. "He does not own the job. He is only filling it. You men ought to wake up. When you grow old, or you are sick, and let down a trifle in your work, you will discover quickly that it is no longer your job. It is some one's else."
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Pays Union Before Preacher.
When she belonged to the union Mrs. Jones said that she paid her dues before she paid the preacher or settled with the grocer or the landlord. "Capital owns every court in the country today," declared Mrs. Jones. "The workers dress the army and navy. The workers pay retired army officers as high as $11,000 for sitting down and doing nothing. The workers dress these men and feed them, and build them homes to shoot them down. The workers pay the mayor, and all your city officers, and the policemen. The whole lot are controlled by capital. You put the officers in office and capital controls them. I wish you were only as wise as monkeys. Did you ever hear of one monkey giving another a club with which to beat him? That's what you do when you maintain a police force."
Mrs. Jones had heard of laboring men fighting nearly to the death because one happened to have been born in one part of the country that the other did not like. They differed over religion, and they fought. She charged that the serpent of dissension was instilled by the agents of the corporation for which the laborers were working-the plan was to keep them as far apart as possible.
Mrs. Jones believed there was a remedy. If she did not she said she would have laid down and died long ago. She fervently believed that socialism was the remedy. With "commercial cannibalistic civilization" on one side and socialism on the other, in her mind, there could be no doubt as to which would eventually triumph. Mrs. Jones was introduced by J. C. Gibson. This morning she left for Monmouth, where she is to speak this evening.
[photographs and paragraph breaks added]
From the Decatur Daily Review of February 15, 1905:
SMALL AUDIENCE HEARS MRS, JONES
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Condemned All Parities and Beliefs
Except the Socialists.
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To an audience of thirty or thirty-five people Mother Jones the celebrated labor and socialistic agitator spoke in the G. A. R. hall Tuesday night. The lecture was delivered under the auspices of the Decatur socialists. It was extremely socialistic in its nature, Mother Jones holding Socialism to be the only relief for the oppressed workingman. A collection was taken up for her at the close of the lecture.
The president, congress and all political parties except the Socialists were condemned. President Roosevelt was alleged to belong to an army of robbers who live by systematic plundering of the people. A large part of the lecture was taken up by the discussion of the late strike in Colorado. Ex-Governor Peabody was done to a turn.
Think of it, she said, a measly, contemptible corrupt, and degenerate governor who would have six soldiers with guns take a poor woman, 66 years ofd out of the state.
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Mother Jones in Illinois
This is a summary of where in Illinois we found Mother during the months of
January and February:
Early Jan-Chicago at the Conference of Industrial Unionist
Speaking tour-
Jan 10-Freeport
Jan 12-Rock Island
Feb 8-Jacksonville
about Feb 12-Pawnee
Feb 14-Decatur
Feb 15-Pana
Feb 21-Marion (completing a 3-day campaign which also included Herrin and Carterville
of Williamson county.)
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SOURCES
Freeport Journal-Standard
(Freeport, Illinois)
-Jan 11, 1905
http://www.newspapers.com/...
Rock Island Argus
(Rock Island, Illinois)
-Jan 13, 1905
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/...
H/T to mothejones1930 for sending me this story.
And a big thank you also!
The Jacksonville Daily Journal
(Jacksonville, Illinois)
-Feb 9, 1905
http://www.newspapers.com/...
The Daily Review
(Decatur, Illinois)
-Feb 12, 1905
http://www.newspapers.com/...
-Feb 15, 1905
http://www.newspapers.com/...
-Feb 16, 1905
http://www.newspapers.com/...
The Daily Free Press
(Carbondale, Illinois)
-Feb 22, 1905)
http://www.newspapers.com/...
See also:
Mother Jones Lives on Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/...
Mother Jones Museum
http://www.motherjonesmuseum.org/
IMAGES
Mother Jones, Miners' Angel
http://www.biography.com/...
Mother Jones Standing
http://theadvocateonline.com/...
Child Labor, Three Little Girls
http://www.old-picture.com/...
Child Labor, Boys of the Mills
http://www.socialwelfarehistory.com/...
SPA Button
http://www.marxists.org/...
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Internationale - Socialist Victory Choir
Arise ye workers from your slumbers
Arise ye prisoners of want
For reason in revolt now thunders
And at last ends the age of cant.
Away with all your superstitions
Servile masses arise, arise
We’ll change henceforth the old tradition
And spurn the dust to win the prize.
So comrades, come rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale unites the human race.
- Eugène Pottier in Paris, June 1871, (translated)
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