The newspapers were hammering me,
and the priests and the ministers were hammering me,
but I am alive yet,
I am still here, hammering them.
-Mother Jones
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Tuesday May 18, 1915
Washington, D. C., - Mother Jones Wraps Up Her Testimony Before Walsh Commission
On Friday May 14th, Mother Jones appeared before the Commission on Industrial Relations to conclude her testimony. She was questioned on that day by Chairman Walsh and by Commissioner Weinstock.
She made many memorable statements on during these interrogations.
Regarding the time spent in the cold cellar cell at Walsenburg, Colorado, she said:
And so I was put in the cellar. It was cold, it was a horrible place, and they thought it would sicken me, but I concluded to stay in that cellar and fight them out. I had sewer rats that long every night to fight, and all I had was a beer bottle; I would get one rat, and another would run across the cellar at me. I fought the rats inside and out just alike.
Speaking of a mass meeting held in Philadelphia before the March of the Mill Children, she declared:
I showed them children with their hands off, a sacrifice on the altar of profit, giving to this Nation maimed and useless citizens.
I spoke to the ministers, and asked them if they were not carrying out Christ's doctrine, suffer little children to come unto me, they are all that is pure and holy, and you say "Suffer the little ones to go into the slave pens, and we will grind them into profit." And that is what is done.
When asked by Commissioner Weinstock if she had respect for Law and Order, she replied:
I certainly do, but when the law jumps all over my class and there is no law for my class, and it is only for the other fellow, then I want to educate my people so as to put my people on the bench...
And she further stated:
I am always in favor of obeying the law; but if the high-class burglar breaks the law and defies it, then I say we will have a law that will defend the Nation and our people.
When asked for recommendations that the Commission could take to the U. S. Congress, one of Mother's suggestions was public ownership of the mines:
Now, I believe in taking over the mines, Mr. Weinstock. They are mineral, and no operator, no coal company on the face of the earth made that coal. It is a mineral; it belongs to the Nation; it was there down the ages, and it belongs to every generation that comes along, and no set of men should be permitted to use that which is nature's. It should be given to all of nature's children in other nations.
Note: emphasis added to above quotations.
Below the fold, Hellraisers offers excerpts from the May 14th testimony of Mother Jones.
TESTIMONY OF MRS. MARY JONES—Recalled
Washington, D. C., May 14, 1915
Questioned by Chairman Walsh
Early 1914-In the Cold Cellar Cell at Walsenburg, Colorado
From Philadelphia's Evening Public Ledger
of January 22, 1915
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Chairman Walsh. I think last night when we adjourned, Mrs. Jones, you had just detailed your arrest in Colorado, and if you would, please, I wish you would continue and put in the whole Colorado incident down to the end, so far as it has to do with you.
Mother Jones. I think I closed about where I was arrested.
Chairman Walsh. You were arrested at Trinidad?
Mother Jones. And taken to the Sisters of Mercy Hospital. They turned it into a prison, a portion of it, and I was incarcerated there with three military men, one in front of the door, and one at each side of the door, and one outside of the window, and the whole military camp across the way from the hospital, and then the headquarters of the military was in the next room to me.
And I didn't see anyone for the nine weeks that I was incarcerated there but my attorney...Mr. Hawkins and Mr. Clark, who represented him. He came once to see me to get me to sign some documents for writ of habeas corpus, and Maj. Boughton came with him; and I made some remarks with regard to they wouldn't get the writ of habeas corpus granted from the judge there. I knew very well they would not, because he represented the interests there, and I did not want our people to spend any money, because they had none to spend. So, however, they applied for the habeas corpus and it was not granted.
The superioress came and told me—I think the colonel got her to do so, thinking I would succumb and surrender—that it was turned down. I said, "All right," and she says, " You ought to go to Denver." " I will go when I get ready; when my hands are free. I don't need any instructions or advice on that at all." And so she went away and I was kept there; I never got any mail, not a newspaper or a postal card or a single thing for nine long weeks that I was alone in that room.
But the colonel used to come every once in a while to see me to see if I was getting ready to surrender, and I said, " Colonel, I will not surrender," or "captain." He says, "I am not a captain; you are pulling me down." I says, "What are you?" He says, "A colonel." He was a strutting back to tell me what his title was, and so on. I says, "All right, sir." And so he went away and didn't come back for a day or two. And I never saw Gen. Chase at all until the morning I was taken to Denver, at the close of the nine weeks, when they were going into the supreme court in Denver for writ of habeas corpus. He came to me on Sunday and he said, "Would you go up and see the governor if he wishes to see you?" I waited a moment and I said, " Well, yes; I will go up and see the governor if he wishes to see me. While I have no respect for the governor personally, I have a great deal for the office he holds, and out of respect I hold for the office he holds I shall comply with his request." And so that is all I heard of it.
And he came that evening eight minutes before the Santa Fe train was to go out, in an automobile, and said, "Are you ready?" "Why," I said, "No; I am just getting ready to retire." He says, "Get ready; they are going in eight minutes." He said. "Jump, jump, jump." Well, I had a little valise there, and I got it and I handed it out to the guard at the door to put the straps on it, and he took the valise and threw it out in the automobile, and they locked the guard up in his room and cleared the whole hall, and so I was taken down the back way—not the front way at all, but the back way—and was put into an automobile in the dark.
The automobile ran away. I had the fellow that was running it—he was running it down by the C. & S. road—to make a short cut to the Santa Fe; and he made him go around some dark alleys. I want to say, Mr. Walsh, it was the first time in my life that I made up my mind I was going to die; I concluded that they were going to kill me, and I was preparing to make a fight before I left. However, after a while we struck the Santa Fe train, pulled away, out entirely away from the depot. That was switched away from the depot, and I was put on. I got a little relief when I was up in the Pullman, and so I went to bed. There were two of the military officers there, this man colonel that used to come all of the time, and another one, a doctor, and we went into Denver.
In the morning the general met me at the train. He introduced me to the general, and I didn't catch his first name, and I said to the colonel, "Who is that?" (he was in his civilian clothes), and he said, "It is Gen. Chase." "Oh," I said, "that is Gen. Chase?" "Yes. We will go to the Adams Hotel." "General, if you would, concede to me the right to go to the Oxford; I have been going there for years and know them all, and I don't care to go to the Adams." It was rather aristocratic and was out of my line, and I didn't care to go there, and so we went to the Oxford, and he said, "We will come after you at 9 o'clock to go to the governor."
"I think you had better put it off until 10; I want Mr. Hawkins to go with me," and he said. "You don't need him; the governor will treat you courteous," and I said, "That is not the question involved; I want my attorney to go with me to the governor, and I won't go unless he says go," and he said "All right."
They went away and left me, and I immediately went to the phone and called Mr. Hawkins, and Mr. Hawkins was not yet out of bed, and he said, "Is this you. Mother?" and I said, "Yes; they brought me in, but I don't know what they are going to do with me." And he said, "Who is with you?" and I said. "Nobody." " What did they say?" he said. I said, "They said they were coming after me at 9 o'clock, but I got them to postpone it until 10 o'clock."
Mother with John Lawson and Horace Hawkins
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Mr. Hawkins came down, and Mr. Lawson with him, and I told him the whole story, and he said, "They have kidnapped you. Mother." I said, "I don't know what they have done." But he called the Adams Hotel and asked Gen. Chase what they had done with me, and he said, "She is turned loose; she is free." But we went to see the governor. He says, "I didn't send for you." And I said, "Your colonel said you did. Somebody must be telling something that is untrue, either you or him." Mr. Hawkins and he talked for a long time, and Mr. Lawson.
I said, "Governor, I will tell you something; you don't own this State, nor you don't own Trinidad. I have broken no law; I have never in my life been in a police court or district court, and I am going back to Trinidad." He said, "If anybody told me it was not the thing to do, I would not do it." "If Washington took that advice we would be under King George the Third; if Lincoln took it, Grant never would have gone to Gettysburg." I didn't tell him just when I was going, but some newspaper men came around and wrote the matter up. I stayed at the hotel for a few days, and I said to Mr. Hawkins, "I have no use for a despot in this country; it was not founded on despotism; and I am going back to Trinidad." And he said, "Do you feel able to, Mother?" And I said, "Yes; I feel able to." "Very well," said he;" when you get ready, you can go back."
I openly got my ticket and went to the train and into the sleeper, and Reno, the C. & F. detective was right across the berth from me. My ticket was registered for Trinidad, and my sleeper also. When I got to Walsenlserg, before I got in there the military man called me. I let on I knew it was the military, but I didn't undress at all that night, and he said. "You have to get up." I said, "No; I am going to Trinidad." "But we want you." "Who are you?" "Oh, I am the military," he said. "Oh," I said, "all right; I will be with you." I got up and went into the dressing room and combed my hair back and came back.
I was taken off of the train by the militia, and the train crew got a little excited; the engineer jumped down and came back and shook hands with me. and the conductor, and I said, "Boys, keep quiet; let this go." We started off with the military, Mr. Brown, an organizer of the United Mine Workers, who happened to be with me on that train. I said to this young fellow, "Where are you going to take me?" He said, "To jail." I said. "Where is the jail?" "In the cellar under the courthouse."
I said, "All right. Is there a fireplace in it or a chimney there?" And he said, "I don't know; do you want a fire?"' "I am not so particular about the fire, as having the chimney." And he said. "What do you want the chimney for, and not the fire?" And I said, "I will tell you about that; I have a pigeon that I have trained, and it goes to Washington, and there is a new wireless invention around its neck, and every week he comes back from Washington, gets on top of the chimney and unwinds that message and sends it down to me." He said, "Did he come when you were at the hospital?" And I said. "Yes; he came every week." And he said, "They never found it out?" I said, "No; I am telling you that now." Imagine an educated woman that raised a thing like that; imagine a State that put a belt full of bullets around his stomach; imagine the Nation that stands for such insults to the intelligence of the people.
Mother in the Cold Cellar Cell
at Walsenburg, Colorado
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And so I was put in the cellar. It was cold, it was a horrible place, and they thought it would sicken me, but I concluded to stay in that cellar and fight them out. I had sewer rats that long every night to fight, and all I had was a beer bottle; I would get one rat, and another would run across the cellar at me. I fought the rats inside and out just alike. I was there 26 days, but one thing I have to say, the colonel that had charge of that, Col. Berdiker, came to me that morning and said. "Mother, I have never been placed in a position as painful as this; won't you go to Denver? "I said, "No, Colonel. I will not." He said—my breakfast came in, two spoonsful of black coffee and some dry bread, and he said, "Don't eat that breakfast; I will send you some." He sent me my meals all the time I was there; at least, he got the miners to do it He was very kind and did everything in the world that his officers would let him do; he had to obey orders, of course, but he was a man in every sense of the word.
So I was there 26 days, and during the 26 days I never slept a night; I used to sleep some daytime. At the end of the 26 days the habeas corpus—the Supreme Court had notified the militia to deliver me in person to the Supreme Court, and they had to turn the militia loose before they could deliver me; before they could turn me loose. And so one morning the colonel said, "Mother, I have some good news for you; I don't know that you will consider it good news, but the general has just telephoned to me that you are free." I said, "No; I don't consider that good news; I consider it a very dirty, contemptible way of doing business, Colonel; it is not the method I admire at all in a person in the general's position."
He said, "You can have transportation wherever you wish to go," and I said, "You tell the general I never have taken any favor from the enemies of my class and I shall accept none from him; I shall transport myself wherever I wish to go, and if I don't have the money to do so, I will walk." And so the colonel shook hands and went away, and the boys came and got my valise and I went to Denver.
Then my attorney knew, of course, the habeas corpus business was turned over, and they sent me to Washington, to Congress.
Summer 1903-The March of the Mill Children
Mother Jones at start March of Mill Children,
June 1903
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Mother Jones. Before I close I would like to ask the permission of the commission, the Child Labor Federal Commission that is here. I am more or less responsible for it. I was called to the strike of the textile workers in Philadelphia. I saw the little boys who had not seen their eleventh year with their hands off here [indicating]; their wrists, taken off from their wrists. I saw their fingers, and I saw those children maimed for life. I asked the reporters; I asked the children first, "Do you work in the mills?" "Yes." "How old are yon?" "I am just a little over 10, Mother." And so it went with boys and girls.
I said to the reporters. "Why don't you publish this and make comment on it?" And they showed me the advertisements, and said that they would be only too willing to, but that they didn't dare. I concluded I would have to wake up the people of this Nation, and I went to work and organized some 6,000 or 7,000 children, many of them with their hands off. I telegraphed to the papers in New York to send me down reporters, feeling that the Philadelphia papers would not take any notice of it, and so the New York papers sent down the reporters.
I had those children in Independence Park; the police didn't know that we were coming until we were down there. We had our banner, and I marched them to the business part of the city and the newspaper district. I had a table in front of the city hall. I put those children up there. There were 50,000 people at that meeting; the biggest gathering that ever assembled in Philadelphia in their history, they said. I showed them children with their hands off, a sacrifice on the altar of profit, giving to this Nation maimed and useless citizens.
I spoke to the ministers, and asked them if they were not carrying out Christ's doctrine, suffer little children to come unto me, they are all that is pure and holy, and you say, "Suffer the little ones to go into the slave pens, and we will grind them into profit." And that is what is done. They closed up; the New York papers and the Philadelphia papers got to fighting one another, and that was all I wanted when I can get those fellows to fight one another, I am all right. It was given publicity, and was discussed in the universities and colleges, and finally got quieted down, and I asked the parents to let me have the little boys, and they said, "Yes."
I got 75 little boys; some with their fingers off and their hands off, and I said, "I am going to see the President and have a bill passed to prohibit the murder of children for profit." I was only going 80 miles, but the children were so happy, and the agitation was so great; they never had had the sunshine or the grass before, and now they were bathing in the rivers, and the people were feeding them.
They had their little tincups and knapsacks, and were marching, and were having the finest time they had ever had, and the newspapers were hammering me, and the priests and ministers were hammering me, but I am alive yet. I am still here, hammering them, and so I marched them along until I got them in Jersey City.
I sent some one over to New York to ask the chief of police if he would give me protection for the children, and he was a military fellow, the commissioner, and the chief was away, and he said, "No; you can't come into New York." Well, I concluded I would show him whether I could or not, and I went over myself and asked him if he had any reason, and he said, "Yes"; but he would not give it to me. "Very well," I said, "I will take it to the mayor."
And Low was mayor of New York at that time. He evidently knew I was coming, because the usher said that the mayor would see me directly. I said, "All right." In a few minutes the mayor came in, and I told him my business, and he said. "Mother Jones, I had to sustain the commissioner's decision." "Do you have to, mayor?" "Yes." And I said, "I don't see why New York pays an understrapper, if the other man does the business." He just kind of looked down and said nothing. I said, "Mayor Low, have you a reason?" And he said, "Yes." "You won't object to giving it to me?" And he said, "No;" and I said, "Perhaps we can clear it up."
The reason was, I was not a citizen of New York, nor neither were those children. "Is that your chief reason?" He said, "Yes." "Well, I think I can clear that up. Mayor Low. I think we will straighten that out immediately. Some time last summer there came over here a piece of royalty from Germany, and the United States voted $45,000 to fill that fellow's stomach for three weeks. And President Roosevelt hired a massage doctor to rub him down so he could get back. Was he a citizen of New York," I says. "No," he says, "he was not."
"Did he ever create any wealth for this Nation?" "Well, no," he said. And I says, "We did. Don't I have the same right to come in here that he had?" He says, "Yes." So I went in and I got my children all in, and we had a big meeting that night and the police took care of us, and the captain says, "Mother," he says, "you need never go to the chief or the mayor or to anybody else when you want to come in; you come to me and it will be all right."
So my children did have a meeting and we raised $3,000 or $4,000 or $5,000 for the strikers; and I took my children down and took them down to Boston Bay, and Boston came and took them children and showed them the elephants and everything; and they never had seen anything like it.
Now, the reporters were all going to Oyster Bay, and they blocked my job, and I wanted to see the President, so I telephoned Senator Platt to give me assistant; and he said, "All right, Mother." And I went down. Well, you know this Oriental Hotel, and that is where the robbers of Wall Street go to roost through the summer. So I took the children and went down there, and I had my little band, and they had every place blockaded. You can't step on that sacred ground without there is an officer after you. And I went to a section man, and I says, "How am I going to get in to them fellows?" He says, "I don't know. You can't go in at the door?" "Well, no; the thing is so guarded I can't get in." He says, "Well, I don't know, Mother."
"Well, I want to go in with these children, and I want breakfast." And he says, "There is only one way to get in there, and that is through the saloon. And if the saloon keeper lets you in there, you can get in." "Do you know him?" "Yes," he said "I know him; yes." "Well," I says, "come on down with me, and I will get you a drink." And you can always buy an Irishman a drink. And so we went to the saloon and went in, and I says to the saloon keeper, I says, "Can I go in to see them pirates to-day with these children?" And he says, "Yes."
And so I took the children and went in, and the children had a little band, and so they sang, "Hail, hail, the gang's all here." Well, that bunch all got up and ran away and went upstairs; the men and women; and the hotel gave us our breakfast, and we all had good things, and the children had never had any such breakfast. The cook fixed it up. You know, he was a miner cook, and he fixed up everything; and the little ones went off happy.
Well, I went down to Oyster Bay, and the reporters didn't know where I was going, and I got in and didn't see no one of the secret-service men; and I thought I would go up and see President Roosevelt about having passed that bill; and when I got up to go there, he put secret-service men all the way from his house down to Oyster Bay to prevent the children coming up there. He had a lot of secret-service men watching an old woman and an army of children. You fellows do elect wonderful Presidents. The best thing you can do is to put a woman in the next time, and she will do it.
Mother Jones Questioned by Commissioner Weinstock
Mother Jones on "Law and Order"
Commissioner Weinstock. In your statement yesterday, among other things you told about the experiences you had, I think, in the vicinity of Greensburg.
Mother Jones. Yes, Pennsylvania.
Commissioner Weinstock. And there was some one with you on a street car or a railroad car, and you wanted to get off?
Mother Jones. A street car.
Commissioner Weinstock. And the conductor refused to let you off?
Mother Jones. No; you have that wrong, Mr. Weinstock. The conductor never refused to let me off; it was the women and the babies. The judge had sentenced them to 30 days in jail. I would not let the women leave their babies behind, so they got on the street car, and when we got to a station there were three or four scabs got on the car, and the women were going to jail, and they had a certain resentment against those scabs because they go in and take their bread. Now, Mr. Weinstock remember we strikers are striking for a better condition for all, whether they are union men and women or nonunion; they are all workers anyhow; but they make the fight and they raise the wages of the nonunion mother as well as the union one. We are in a conference, you know.
So these women were a little irritated when they saw those scabs get on, and they gave me the babies, and I took the babies; I think I had four or five of them in my arms and another bunch of them around me, and they went and lampooned those scabs, and the scabs began to holler. There were two of the constabulary there, but they were nice boys and they didn't meddle; I think they were a little leery of what was going to happen; and I would not let the street car motorman stop to let those men off until he got to a regular station. They were hollering, "Stop the car," and the motorman got a little nervous, too., and I said, "Now, you don't stop that car; it is against the law, and you must obey the law."
Commissioner Weinstock. That is the point I wanted you to refresh my memory on. You called attention to the fact that they must obey and respect the law.
Mother Jones. Yes, the motorman; he had no right to stop the car there; it was an interurban car.
Commissioner Weinstock. I take it from that. Mother Jones, that you are an advocate of law and order and would insist on people obeying the law and respecting it?
Mother Jones. I certainly do, but when the law jumps all over my class and there is no law for my class, and it is only for the other fellow, then I want to educate my people so as to put my people on the bench....
Commissioner Weinstock. From what you have explained. Mother Jones, it is evident that some explanation is needed. There appears in the record of the congressional committee a copy of which I have here, setting forth a hearing before a subcommittee of the Committee on Mines and Mining of the House of Representatives, a statement attributed to you, which evidently is a mistake, and does you a grave injustice, and I think you should be afforded an opportunity at this hearing for the purposes of our record to correct it.
(This is entered here as Operators' Exhibit No. 305, "Address made by Mother Jones, delivered before the convention in Trinidad, Colo., on Tuesday, the 16th day of September, 1913.")
Among other things you are alleged to have said, speaking, I think, of some labor trouble in West Virginia:
Mother Jones in West Virginia
during Paint Creek-Cabin Creek Strike
of 1912-13
``````````
We told him we lived in America beneath the flag for which our fathers fought; that we lived in the United States, and we had a right and had a ground to fight on; and we asked the governor to abolish the Baldwin guards. That was the chief thing I was after, and I tell you the truth, because I knew when we cleaned them out other things would come with it.
So I said in the article we will give the governor until 8 o'clock to-morrow evening to get rid of the Baldwin guards, and if he don't do business we will do business. I called the committee, and I said, "Here, take this document and go into the governor's office and present it to him. Now, don't get on your knees; you don't need to get on your knees: we have no kings in America; stand on both feet, with your heads erect, and present that document to the governor." And they said. "Will we wait?" I said. "No. don't wait, and don't say, 'your honor,'" said I, because few of those fellows have any honor and don't know what it is.
When we adjourned the meeting and saw we were not going to get any help, I said, "We will protect ourselves and buy every gun in Charleston." There was not a gun left in Charleston; and we did it openly, no underhanded business about it, for I don't believe in it at all. We simply got our guns and ammunition and walked down to the camps, and the fight began.
Now, as one who believes in law and order and obeying the law, there must be some mistake, or you were misquoted, and this is an opportunity for you to correct it.
Mother Jones. I am going to tell you about that. I made that speech, not in Trinidad, but on the steps of the statehouse in Charleston. The strike was not on very long—three or four months, I think three months—and I did so, and the governor stood there, and the whole statehouse administration was there. When I said, "We demand of the governor to abolish the Baldwin guards," I did so; I don't deny it. I don't believe in any such brutal combination; they are a disgrace to our Nation; they violate every law; they teach the coming children to be lawbreakers, brutes, and murderers, and for that I am strictly opposed to those armies.
And I would say, Mr. Weinstock, that I would ask this Government and ask this commission to demand of Congress that she pass a bill that the Government take over all of those detective agencies and run them on an honorable basis.
I don't believe—I have had more experience with those people than any other one person in America and I have never seen one of them hurt. I could have had all those deputies and sheriffs murdered that morning down at Half Way, in Utah, if I had just said one word to those men the night before, but that would not settle the disease; the disease still remained. The disease lies in the private ownership of my bread, and one class of men can say how much I shall eat and how much my children shall eat.
I stand for a better citizenship, and I stand for law and have stood for law, and in all my career it can be proven, the records of the courts, police and county, and everywhere can be searched, and there has never been a charge against me;
I am always in favor of obeying the law; but if the high-class burglar breaks the law and defies it, then I say we will have a law that will defend the Nation and our people,
for whenever a nation undertakes to crush her producers and to debase and dehumanize them, that nation is going over the breakers; it is the history of all nations down the stairway of time
In 50 years we have created more wealth than any other nation in the world has done in 700 years, and one group owns that wealth and the masses of people are impoverished.
I am for schools. I said to the governor of West Virginia, "If you had taken that $700,000 that you spent to crush my class, the miners, and put it into the schoolrooms of the State, and given to the Nation a more highly developed citizenship, morally, physically, and mentally, it would have been more valuable to the Nation."
I saw the schooldoors closed on the children, and for many of them never to open again. Many of them had to go out and struggle for bread, and many were made criminals and idiots, and if that money, that $700,000 that was put into the militia, to crush my class, had been put into the schoolrooms we would have had less use for law.
Commissioner Weinstock. There is no change to be made in that statement?
Mother Jones. No; that can stay. I will tell you how that came to be put into the record. They had a little two-by-four lawyer in Charleston, and he made up a job with the coal company's lawyer to run that in, so that he could get it on me, and the miners are paying him $7,500 a year for doing nothing, only incarcerating them, and I am going to put a stop to that thing.
Am I through? I am tired.
The Recommendations of Mother Jones
Commissioner Weinstock. You know the purposes that this commission is created for, Mother Jones—that is, that Congress expects this commission to come back to it with recommendations for remedial legislation. Now, if you were a member of the commission, Mother Jones, what would you recommend to Congress to remedy the condition that you complain of?
Mother Jones. I will tell you, as I stated before we got to discussing this question, you and I, I was not an educated woman; I belong to the classes. I should recommend to Congress that they should do away with all of these arms and detective agencies, because they create crime. They are criminals.
The Death Special
Complete with Gunthugs
and Machine Gun
``````````
Commissioner Weinstock. That is, to do away with the gunmen?
Mother Jones. And these detective agencies; let the Government run their agencies, and you will have less trouble, less crime, less penitentiary subjects, and you will have better manhood and better womanhood. I have a great deal to tell the commission, but it is unnecessary; but you see, Mr. Weinstock, we have spent years in the past, we are an infant in the history of nations yet, practically speaking. Now, we have spent our years following our birth inventing machinery, building railroads, telephones, telegraphs, and everything else, and we are reaching a stage where these inventions are taking the place of labor. There must be something done by the National Government to relieve this discontent, because we have armies of unemployed. Last Sunday I addressed a large meeting down here in Pennsylvania. It was the glass industry, where a thousand men were employed. The machine came in and threw the whole thousand of skilled mechanics out—10 men are doing the work of 1,000, and it is so in so many other industries.
Now, Mr. Weinstock, we had a Federal commission 15 years ago. I think Mr. O'Connell remembers that. That commission went through this Nation; it made some of the finest recommendations that could be made to Congress. Those recommendations lie up in the archives of this Nation, and I venture to say in the last 15 years not 12 Congressmen have read them. Now, you see, you had an investigation in Colorado; one whole year passed away, and two days before Congress closed they brought that up on the floor of the House. They had an investigation in Michigan that they never brought up at all. What good are the investigations if the public don't know what is happening in the country?
My advice, and I give it to the workers when I speak to them is, when you send a man to the Senate or Congress or to the legislature, when he comes home have a platform at the depot, and make that representative tell you what he has done for the best interests of the Nation, and render an account of himself right then and there, and then you will not have so many Congressmen fighting for bills for the protection of 26 Broadway and other institutions like that.
Am I through?
Commissioner Weinstock. Your recommendation, then, briefly, is this-I want to make sure that I understand it thoroughly—that the remedy for industrial unrest would be to wipe out the detective agencies?
Mother Jones. That is only one step. Now, I believe in taking over the mines, Mr. Weinstock. They are mineral, and no operator, no coal company on the face of the earth made that coal. It is a mineral; it belongs to the Nation; it was there down the ages, and it belongs to every generation that comes along, and no set of men should be permitted to use that which is nature's. It should be given to all of nature's children in other nations.
Commissioner Weinstock. Then your remedy would be public ownership of the mines?
Mother Jones. All other industries, and then we can get the hours of labor down and put men to work. I also believe in the ownership of the transportation lines. I don't want to put you out of a job, Mr. Aishton.
Chairman Walsh. We thank you, Mrs. Jones; and you will be excused permanently.
SOURCES
Industrial relations: final report and testimony
United States. Commission on Industrial Relations
-ed by Francis Patrick Walsh, Basil Maxwell Manly
D.C. Gov. Print. Office, 1916
Volume 11: https://books.google.com/...
10634-Washington, D. C., Friday, May 14, 1915—10 a. m.
Present: Chairman Walsh, Commissioners Garretson, Weinstock,
Lennon, O'Connell, Aishton, and Harriman.
Mother Jones-recalled
https://books.google.com/...
Mother Jones Speaks
-ed by Philip S Foner
NY, 1983
(The entire testimony of Mother Jones along with the
Mother Jones Statement & Exhibit can be found in this book.)
https://books.google.com/...
IMAGES
Mother Jones from the Great Bend (KS) Tribune
of Mar 6, 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/...
Mother Jones from Evening Public Ledger
of Philadelphia of Jan 22, 1915
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/...
John Lawson, Mother Jones, Attorney Horace Hawkins
http://ludlowsymposium.wordpress.com/...
Mother Jones, Military Bastile,
Walsenburg Cellar Cell, Colorado, 1914
https://archive.org/...
Mother Jones at start March of Mill Children, June 1903
(search with Mother Jones, choose p.253)
http://books.google.com/...
Mother Jones with Strikers Children in West Virginia
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/...
The Death Special
https://www.du.edu/...
See also:
Written Statement of Mother Jones,
read by Mother into the record of the Commission:
https://books.google.com/...
Jones Exhibit
https://books.google.com/...
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The Spirit of Mother Jones - Andy Irvine
Mother Jones, the Miners' Angel must be treated with respect
She's an old fashioned lady, and you never would suspect
That this gown and this bonnet would fill a rich man full of dread
"She's the most dangerous woman in America," they said.
-Andy Irvine
See Also:
Spirit of Mother Jones Festival July 2014
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