You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Saturday May 6, 1905
From the Miners Magazine: Mother Jones Speaks to Michigan Copper Miners
Mother Jones was in Michigan's copper country during the past three weeks agitating for the the organization of the miners of that area into the Western Federation of Miners. She also came to support a strike of street railway workers. While in copper country, she delivered a speech at Calumet described by the local press as "pyrotechnic." The
Miners Magazine, the official journal of the W. F. of M., in its latest edition has reprinted a synopsis of that speech from the account provided by the
Copper Country Evening News, a newspaper published in Calumet.
During the speech, Mother noted that the working man and woman should have the sense of mule, and that is to kick when told to work, work, work, beyond endurance:
Work, work, work is preached from the pulpit, the newspaper and the magazine. The laboring people are anxious to divide the honor, but they won't. You never hear from the pulpit, the magazine or the newspaper headlines, rest, rest, rest. There are men who break their necks to go to work early in the morning and do not know when to quit at night. I don't know about the copper mines, but in the coal mines mules are employed. They kick when it comes time to stop work.
Mother encouraged the miners to organize if they want a better life for themselves and their families. The entire article from the
Miners Magazine can be found below the fold.
From the Miners Magazine of May 4, 1905:
"Mother" Jones is raising her voice in behalf of the downtrodden laboring men of the state of Michigan. The Copper Country Evening News, published at Calumet, Michigan, gives the following synopsis of her address recently delivered in that city:
[Mother Jones began:]
When we look back over the world's history and go back to the cradle of the race, we try to see how they started out. We can see human beings on the banks of a great river way back in the ages. They could not lisp a language but made known their thoughts by glances and signs. They looked to the opposite bank of the river and beheld trees loaded with fruit. They knew it was there to nourish them, but between them and that wealth stood this tremendous body of water. They began to use their reasoning powers-they were more advanced than we are in some ways-in an effort to find a way to secure this wealth. Finally, one savage saw a branch floating down the stream. It finally decided that the water held up this branch and one savage put his foot on it.
By long reasoning he evolved a scheme to ride across the water on the body of a tree. Two other savages then had aspirations. They did not want to see only one of their number over there eating the fruit and by experiments they bound two together. But one savage wanted to take his children and they might fall off into the water, so he scooped out the inside of the tree and placed them in it. They reasoned with the brain that nature gave them and took possession of that wealth. They reasoned better than the workingman of to-day. For the great liners which plow the oceans and the locomotives that thunder across the continent are the results of reasoning-all the machinery that produces is the result of that study, and we find that all wealth is in the hands of a few. The other large class must appeal to the few for the right to work, to live, to eat, to be housed.
Work, work, work is preached from the pulpit, the newspaper and the magazine. The laboring people are anxious to divide the honor, but they won't. You never hear from the pulpit, the magazine or the newspaper headlines, rest, rest, rest. There are men who break their necks to go to work early in the morning and do not know when to quit at night. I don't know about the copper mines, but in the coal mines mules are employed. They kick when it comes time to stop work.
The machinery which seems so hard for us to claim now will be easy in the future. Look at the great factories. The time of the hand tool is past. We don't work alone now, but collectively, even by thousands. We are brought face to face with a new condition. we work to-day for the great syndicate instead of the single employer. The last war with Spain opened markets which have been locked up for centuries. International armies battered down the walls of Peking and the American nation took the key.
The workingmen have not kept pace with this step. They dream away their days-they dream as they did of old. They do not think. They still slumber. They go on just like dumb animals. It is just as a street railway superintendent said when the men struck: "The cattle don't know what they're doing." And the fact is, they did not. They were not organized. They knew that they had cowards to deal with and they used the lash and I give them credit for it. You "scab" on each other. The capitalist don't scab on each other. They are too honorable.
She told a story about the sugar trust and then cried sarcastically:
But you fellows will "scab." Do you wonder that a few own all the Machinery on earth? But your day will come some time. I do not care if it don't though. It is for your children and your children's children that I am fighting.
In the coal mines and mills some men make good wages, but the average do not. At the end of the month they have nothing and have to ask for help. Is this the condition you boast of in this century? When a human being is killed in a mine, his dead body is hauled up in the cage and the men go back to work laughing. This man was murdered. It is brutal. It is inhuman. It is illustrated by the story of a mine owner who exclaimed every time a miner was killed: "Was the mule killed?" You see, the mule cost $120 and the miner did not cost anything. He could be replaced.
The speaker referred to the cabled condolences to Russia from Washington when the Grand Duke Sergius was killed, "that murderer of the working people." She said that about the same time 150 miners were killed in a mine in Alabama.
In less than five minutes 150 souls were blown to eternity. Yet there was not one word of condolence, not a single line. If there is any sympathy it must come from our own ranks. What right have you to fear? You say you cannot join the union because you would lose your job. Poor, dreamy wretch. You never owned a job, for those who own the machinery own the job, and you have to get permission to earn your bread and butter. You can change masters, it is true, but you have to hunt your master for that job you call yours.
Mother with young strikers at start of
The March of the Mill Children, 1903
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I have gotten up at 4:30 in the morning and gone with babies to the factories. They began work at 5:30 and quit at 7 at night. Children six years old going home to lie on a straw pallet until time to resume work the next morning! I have seen the hair torn out of their heads by the machinery, their scalps torn off, and yet not a single tear was shed, while the poodle dogs were loved and caressed and carried to the seashore. And you stand idly by and indorse this thing. If it were you who were going to suffer I would say "Let it be so." But it is for your children and your children's children that I do this-that I fight your battles for you.
A fruit grower in California, after the Chinamen were excluded, sent to South America for 500 monkeys. He trained them to pick the fruit, and for fear they would eat the fruit he muzzled them. Your employers do not have to go to the expense of muzzling you-you are already muzzled.
Mother Jones then began an exhaustive description of the conditions which prevailed in Colorado during the recent labor troubles there, and she said:
Yes, I was in Colorado. I was there seven months and I would be there yet if the military had not put me out in the night.
She said that a blacker conspiracy was never put up than there was against the people of that state.
I am not afraid of the pen, the sword or the scaffold. I will tell the truth about it everywhere I please.
She reviewed the action which brought about the troubles and paid a tribute to the Western Federation of Miners. She said the people who were sent out of Colorado were inhumanely treated and had to drink out of the place where horses did; that they were placed in cars and unloaded after a long ride miles from any place of shelter, and that they had no food in all the journey.
She appealed to the women to bring up their children in the right way. Then she spoke of the troubles with the miners of West Virginia.
These men were peaceful. They worked in the mines in the mountains and lived in shacks. A marshal came there to arrest them. The people said they had not violated the law and resisted arrest. The next night a United States deputy and a large number of men stole softly up the mountain side and murdered those men while they slept. I am not speaking from what I have read in books; I was there. I took their bleeding heads in my lap and I kissed their dead lips. They are my brothers and sisters. they were murdered for human greed and that is all.
Mother Jones spoke tenderly of the workingman who takes a drink. She said that it is a good thing that he can forget his misery for a few minutes. "It's a wonder that we are not all drunk all the time," she exclaimed. She said she had worked among drunken men for years. She ridiculed the idea of sending missionaries to foreign lands, saying that there is plenty of such work needed here at home.
She closed with an appeal to the men to organize.
Boys, get together and organize. It will make business better for your city. It will end the troubles. It will end the strikes. Down in Illinois they used to have strikes right along, but since the men organized they get together with the mine operators and talk over the matter and arrive at a decision as to their best interests. They never have any trouble there.
[Paragraph breaks and photographs added.]
MOTHER JONE ARRIVES IN MICHIGAN'S COPPER COUNTRY
The Pennsylvania Tyrone Daily Herald of April 15, 1905-
Announcing the arrival of Mother Jones:
"Mother" Jones in Copper Country.
Houghton, Mich., April 15.-Mrs. Mary Jones better known throughout the country as "Mother" Jones, famous as a labor agitator, arrived in the copper country, drawn here by the street railway and mine strikes. "Mother" Jones was prominent as an organizer of miners in the Colorado labor troubles, and owing to her influence was deported from the state. She will speak in the copper country towns.
The Minneapolis Journal of April 15, 1905-
Ringing the alarm bells about the supposed intentions of Mother and the W. F. of M.:
MICHIGAN
OPERATORS WILL NOT TEMPORIZE
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COPPER MINES WILL BE CLOSED ABSOLUTELY IF MEN STRIKE
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No Concessions Will Be Considered and Owners
Will Prepare for an Indefinite Siege-
Federation Organizers Believed to Be Quietly
Agitating a General Strike.
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Special to The Journal.
Houghton, Mich., April 15.-In expectation of a general strike on May 1, the mine operators of Houghton, Keweenaw and Ontonagon counties have decided in case of a walkout to make no concessions whatever, and close down absolutely for an indefinite period.
The conservative element among the Calumet & Hecla employees are laboring hard to prevent a strike. In case of a general strike the old men may not get their jobs back when a settlement is reached.
"Mother" Jones is here and Charles Moyer, president of the Western Federation of Miners, has been a visitor. The federation organizers say they are not agitating a strike, but the evidence is to the contrary.
Sixteen thousand men would be affected directly, and as many more indirectly by a general strike.
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MOTHER JONES ARRIVES IN MINNEAPOLIS
The Minneapolis Journal of May 6, 1905-
Announcing the arrival of Mother in that city with the claim that she is now a member of the American Labor Union:
Fresh from the excitement of the street car strikes at Houghton, Mich., "Mother" Jones of the American Labor union is in Minneapolis. Local leaders of the association gave a reception in her honor yesterday afternoon at the Russell Coffee house. Mrs. Jones believes in a great future for the American Labor union. Much of her time at strike centers is spent in endeavoring to prevent rioting.
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SOURCES
Mother Jones Speaks
-ed by Philip S Foner
NY, 1983
Tyrone Daily Herald
(Tyrone, Pennsylvania)
-Apr 15, 1905
http://www.newspapers.com/...
The Minneapolis Journal
(Minneapolis, Minnesota)
-Apr 15, 1905
http://www.newspapers.com/...
-May 6, 1905
http://www.newspapers.com/...
IMAGES
Mother Mary Harris Jones
http://theadvocateonline.com/...
Mother Jones, Appeal to Reason, Mar 11, 1905
http://www.newspapers.com/...
Copper Miners of Michigan
http://blogs.mtu.edu/...
Mother Jones at start March of Mill Children, June 1903
(search with Mother Jones, choose p.253)
http://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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