Hellraisers Journal, Sunday October 13, 1907
Remembering Mother Jones in West Virginia in 1902
With the recent passing of Judge John Jay Jackson, the Old Injunction Judge, who was the bane of the United Mine Workers of America during their struggles in West Virginia back in 1902, we recall how Mother Jones earned her reputation as a “dangerous woman.” Dangerous she was then, and is yet today, to those seeking to keep the miners beat down and their union broken, but in the coal camps across the nation, where men labor for long hours at low pay, she is known as “The Miners’ Angel.”
According to some accounts, during the closing arguments, July 11th and 12th, of that year, the United States Attorney pointed his finger at her and declared:
There sits the most dangerous woman in America. She comes into a State where peace and prosperity reign. She crooks her finger-twenty thousand contented working men lay down their tools and walk out.
The Worker of July 27, 1902 reported the story:
THE TRIAL OF MOTHER JONES.
—–
Federal District Attorney Declares Her
a Dangerous Woman.
—–Decision Not Yet Given as The Worker goes to Press–
Vigorous Effort to Imprison or Banish
Brave Woman from West Virginia.Tuesday, July 24, was the day set for Judge Jackson of the United State court at Parkersburg, W. Va., to give his decision in the cases of Mother Jones, Thos. Haggerty, and eleven other organizers of the United Mine Workers, under arrest for having violated an infamous injunction which forbids them to hold miners’ meetings anywhere within sight of the mine properties, to march on the public roads in the vicinity, or, as a correspondent of The Worker put it, to do anything except eat and drink-and the West Virginia miners don’t get a chance to eat too much, with or with-[out?] injunctions.
Reese Blizzard, United States District Attorney, conducted the prosecution. He is counted a very able lawyer and he used all his powers to carry his point-or, rather, to carry the point for the mine owners. His closing speech occupied four hours.
Cannot Understand Her.
Mother Jones is obviously considered the most dangerous offender. The “Operators” and their tools cannot understand this wonderful little woman, who is content to labor incessantly, to go hungry and cold sometimes, to endure all manner of hardships and insults and dangers, to go to prison, if need be, in order to carry on her work of organizing and educating and inspiring the miners, and whom the strongest men among the mine workers treat with such confidence and such perfect respect.
“A Dangerous Woman.”
The press reports say that Blizzard called attention to the fact that Mother Jones was especially dangerous owing to the fact that her influence among the miners is almost unlimited and that, also by reason of her powerful intellect she is an instrument of great harm. The miners, he said, are receiving good wages and their condition is satisfactory, but, according to the testimony of this woman, she has come into this state with the express intention of getting eight or nine thousand miners to throw down their tools and quit work that they may help the two or three hundred who were dissatisfied with their condition and had quit the service of their employers.
After dilating on the enormity of Mother Jones’ guilt, he closed by suggesting that if she would leave the state and promise never to return, the government would be satisfied for the present and would not insist on imprisoning her.
Mother Jones, of course, treated this exhibition of Southern chivalry and Rooseveltian strenuousness with the contempt it deserved. She is not the sort of woman to desert her post under fire.
Judge Tries to Entrap Her.
Judge Jackson himself, the trial justice, took a hand in the examination of Mother Jones and tried, by leading questions, to entrap her into an admission that she was an Anarchist, but he did not succeed very will.
When asked if she had not said that the operators were the same sort of people that had crucified Christ, the witness replied that she had made such a remark.
“Well,” questioned Judge Blizzard, “do you not think that the crucifixion of Christ was the worst crime ever committed?”
“No,” answered the witness in loud tones,
It was not nearly so bad as the crucifixion of little boys in the coal mines who are daily being robbed of their manhood and their intellect by what they are, through necessity, compelled to undergo. Christ could have saved himself, the boys cannot.
Even the flippant reporters of the capitalist papers, all whose sympathies seem to be with the “operators,” were evidently impressed with her courage and dignity.
As The Worker goes to press, the decision has not been rendered, and it is impossible to guess the outcome of the case.
———-
SOURCES
Hellraisers Journal, Friday October 11, 1907
Old Injunction Judge Passed Away on Labor Day
Remembering Judge John Jay Jackson Who Famously Tangled with Mother Jones in 1902
The Worker
(New York, New York)
-An Organ of the Socialist Party [SPA]
(Known in New York State as
the Social Democratic Party.)
-July 27, 1902, page 1
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/the-people-the-worker/020727-worker-v12n17.pdf
http://www.genealogybank.com/
https://archive.org/details/02WorkerCompleteyear
IMAGE
Mother Jones by Bertha Howell (Mrs Mailly), ab 1902
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2004672082/
See also:
Note: The trial of Mother Jones and the other UMW organizers took place before Judge Jackson, at Parkersburg WV, from June 24th to June 27th, 1902. Closing arguments were delivered on July 11th and July 12th. Judge Jackson imposed his sentence on July 24th. I believe it was during closing arguments (July 11 or 12) that Blizzard made his famous comment regarding Mother Jones, as it is after closing arguments that we begin to find mention, in newspapers, of Mother as “dangerous.” More research needed.
Decision of Judge Jackson:
The Federal Reporter
-Cases Argued and Determined in the Circuit
and District Courts of the United States, Volume 116
West Publishing Company, 1902
https://books.google.com/books?id=BZwKAAAAYAAJ
United States ex reL Guaranty Trust Co. of New York
v. Haggerty et al.
(Circuit Court, N. D. West Virginia. July 24, 1902.)
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=BZwKAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA510
Judge Jackson on Mother Jones:
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=BZwKAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA520
I cannot forbear to express my great surprise that a woman of the apparent intelligence of Mrs. Jones should permit herself to be used as an instrument by designing and reckless agitators, who seem to have no regard for the rights of others, in accomplishing an object which is entirely unworthy of a good woman. It seems to me that it would have been better far for her to follow the lines and paths which the Allwise Being intended her sex should pursue. There are many charities in life which are open to her, in which she could contribute largely to mankind in distress, as well as avocations and pursuits that she could engage in of a lawful character that would be more in keeping with what we have been taught and what experience has shown to be the true sphere of womanhood.
Mother Remembers Judge Jackson:
From the Autobiography of Mother Jones
-“Chapter VI: War in West Virginia”
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/jones/autobiography/autobiography.html#VI
-“Chapter VII: A Human Judge
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/jones/autobiography/autobiography.html#VII
Source for quote re “dangerous woman”:
Machinists’ Monthly Journal, Volume 27
(Washington, District of Columbia)
Jan-Dec 1915
International Association of Machinists
Machinists’ Jr Sept 1915
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=9e_NAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&hl=en&pg=GBS.PA771
“Mother Jones” by Peter C. Michelson (From the Delineator)
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=9e_NAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&hl=en&pg=GBS.PA809
For more on Mother and Attorney Blizzard:
https://wvumag.wvu.edu/departments/right-brain/the-most-dangerous-woman-in-america
WE NEVER FORGET
Feb 25, 1903-Mother Jones and the Massacre of the Raleigh County Miners
Yet More on Mother Jones v Judge Jackson, 1902
Hellraisers Journal, Friday October 7, 1904
Democratic Party VP Candidate Authored Injunction Used Against Mother Jones
Hellraisers Journal, Wednesday March 15, 1905
Last Act of Judge Jackson Is to Release the Murderers of Raleigh County Miners
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