I reside wherever there is a good fight against wrong-
all over the country.
Wherever the workers are fighting the robbers
I go there.
-Mother Jones
Hellraisers Journal, Saturday September 30, 1916
Logansport, Indiana – Mother Jones: Interview and Speech
From the Logansport Daily Tribune of September 27, 1916:
Comes to Address Federation of Labor
and Grants Testy Interview
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STILL VIGOROUS AT AGE OF 86
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(By Helen C. Kuppenheimer.)
Mother Jones arrived in the city last evening. The office sent me out to hunt her up and get an interview. These were the directions: “You’ll find her in one of the down-town restaurants-she’s a little, sweet-faced women with white hair and just as kind as she looks.”
I found her down at a Broadway restaurant sitting at a table with three men. I knew her because she was little and white-haired and sweet-faced, just like the office said she would be. I walked over to the table confidently, even boldly-here at least was one interview over which I need feel no timidity or trepidation-because she was as kind as she looked.
She was talking to the men at the table with her and I stopped beside her chair until she would give me an opportunity to speak to her. Finally she glanced up at me and then down at my feet and back up again-and then, very sharply, “Well?” I told her rather hurriedly who I was and what I wanted.
“An interview? What for? The paper? No I am going home and go to bed. I have nothing to say.” All these rapid fire remarks were made in a voice which might easily have reached to the farthest corner of a large hall. While her voice is as strong as a fog horn, it is as nothing compared to the quality of her glance which first pierces and then shrivels the person upon whom it is directed.
Certainly that would have ended everything had it not been for the men who were with her. They evidently felt sorry for me and their combined efforts resulted in my being allowed to make a fifth at the table.
It was then that I got a glimpse beyond her exterior of sharpness into the real kindness of the woman. It is in behalf of the miners over the country that she has worked for the last 30 years and these are the men whom she loves and by whom she is beloved and reverenced in turn. When I would ask her some foolish question and she would direct a stream of wrath against me, one of the men would say to her, “Now, Mother,” and she would calm down just as quiet.
“She is Mother to all of us,” one of the men told me, and then added. “I saw her on the street today and called ‘Hello,” Mother,’ and she stopped right away-she is always glad to see us.”
“Won’t you please tell me about one of your early experiences, just one, no matter how brief,” I begged, knowing how many colorful incidents were associated with her early days. She looked at me and again I withered. She needn’t to have added, “Oh, My God! What for? You say it would be interesting? It wasn’t interesting to me-to go out and fight like I have fought.”
I saved one topic-suffrage-until last. Knowing her strong feeling against woman suffrage, I felt that if there was anything else I wanted to find out, I had better ask it before I broached this subject or leave it forever unasked. Even if I was alive after having the temerity to mention suffrage in her presence, I probably wouldn’t be in any shape to continue the interview.
These are some of the high lights in her denunciation of suffrage and new fangled ideas in general:
“Look at Colorado, the rottenness state in the union. Didn’t they burn little children there?”
Mother Jones at strikers’ tent colony before Ludlow Massacre of April 20, 1914
(Here I made my biggest blunder-I asked her what she meant by burning children-she looked at me pityingly-asked me if I never read anything and dismissed the subject in disgust.) But to resume her tirade against suffrage:
Suffrage isn’t going to help women any; only by relieving the economical pressure will equality of men and women be gained. The trouble lies with the women. They neglect their homes for suffrage and the W. C. T. U. work and rescue homes, social service, and a lot of other fool things. We didn’t need rescue homes and juvenile courts 40 years ago. Why? because women were mothers and trained their children instead of neglecting them.
Politics are rotten and women haven’t made them any better. I don’t care anything about politics-the question of women voting never bothers me-I wouldn’t waste my time thinking about it. I”m fighting for economic freedom.
She said that the capitalists take good care that the economic question in its true light is not presented in the school rooms and that the newspapers over the country were poisonous avenues of misinformation.
This afternoon Mother Jones will address the state labor convention at its session on the economic question. It will be a mistake not to hear her. She is a wonderful and remarkable woman. If she is a bit fierce at times and is not always complimentary, one forgives her by remembering that she is not out to please and that her life has been one long endless struggle during which period she has been in goals and bull pens, in street fights and mobs, all of which tends to make a person neither gracious nor particularly gentle of manner.
Mother Jones is 86 years old, incredible as it seems when one sees her and talks to her. She was dressed in black and deep purple. She is “little and sweet-faced, with white hair” but she isn’t exactly what one generally calls “kind”-at least not to a poor reporteress.
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[Photograph added.]
From the Logansport Pharos-Reporter of September 27, 1916:
Logansport today threw open the doors of the city and welcomed the delegates to the city to attend the three-day session of the thirty-second annual convention of the Indiana State Federation of Labor, which opened this morning. The meeting was called to order in the Elks’ hall, corner Fifth and North streets, at 10 o’clock by Victor J. Wagner, president of Logansport Trades and Labor assembly. Rev. Father Steinmetz of St. Joseph’s Catholic church led the assemblage in prayer, which was followed by an address of welcome on behalf of the city of Logansport by Mayor Frank V. Guthrie.
Following is the address of welcome delivered before the convention by Mayor F. V. Guthrie on behalf of the City of Logansport:
Mr. Chairman, and Gentlemen of the Convention:
It is a great pleasure to welcome the Indiana State Federation of Labor to our city. May your stay be both pleasant and profitable.
We welcome you to a City that owns and operates its own water works and filteration plant and its own electric light plant where eight hours constitutes a day’s work…
“Mother “Jones, one of the most conspicuous women in the labor movement, who has on many occasions been confined in jails and prisons for “agitation,” was present at the meeting this morning and gave an address which covered an hour. During her talk she gave vivid descriptions of various expeditions she had made for the purpose of organizing workingmen to raise them out of alleged slavery. During one instance, when she was telling how in Arizona a “gun man” and others affiliated with the “pirates of organized labor” were kept from bringing in strikebreakers to take the places of union miners out on strike, she suddenly turned on Mayor Guthrie and announced to him that if he would have kept strikebreakers away from Logansport the street car matter would have been somewhat different than at present.
Mother Jones stated she was on her way to Washington D. C., and had planned to go there several days ago, but had deferred her plans in order to be present in Logansport and address the convention “for a purpose.”
During her talk she endorsed President Wilson’s Mexican policy, declaring she honored President Wilson for keeping the United States from being at war, which would be only a benefit for “sewer rats,” as she styled capital and those opposed to organized labor. Her many descriptions of meetings with “sewer rats,” “pirates,” “high-class burglars,” etc., were the means of provoking much mirth. Her talk was spirited throughout and she reviewed the labor situation from its infancy to the present time. She told of how in the city of Chicago the first labor meetings were held and then told of their rapid growth “after the seed had been planted.”
But she also endorsed the re-election of John W. Kerns, Indiana’s senator, for another term, telling how through him a United States investigation was started in the alleged corruptness existing in the state of West Virginia several years ago.
The talk made by Mother Jones is a true example of the spirit of unionism under her own statement that she generally knows what she is talking about. She brought her address to a close at noon by requesting the delegates to stand and give three cheers for senator Kern. The cheers were given with a deafening roar…
[Photograph added.]
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SOURCES
Logansport Daily Tribune
(Logansport, Indiana)
-Sept 27, 1916
https://www.newspapers.com/image/32403158/
https://www.newspapers.com/image/32403179/
Logansport Pharos-Reporter
(Logansport, Indiana)
-Sept 27, 1916
https://www.newspapers.com/image/24888002/
IMAGES
Mother Jones, Logansport Dly Tb IN, Sept 27, 1916
Mother Mary Harris Jones, Logansport, IN, Sept 27, 1916
https://www.newspapers.com/image/32403158/
Mother Jones at Ludlow
http://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/organizations/jones-mary-harris-mother/
Mother Jones, Logansport Pharos IN, Sept 27, 1916
https://www.newspapers.com/image/24888002/
Mother Jones, WV, & children of striking miners, ISR March 1913
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=qFNIAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&source=gbs_atb&pg=GBS.PA646-IA1
See also:
For more on the true passion of Mother Jones-rather than suffrage:
Hellraisers Journal: Tears stream from the eyes of Mother Jones as she tells of industrial horrors. by JayRaye
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/5/16/1385105/-Hellraisers-Journal-Tears-stream-from-the-eyes-of-Mother-Jones-as-she-tells-of-industrial-horrors
For more on Senator Kern and Mother Jones in West Virginia:
“The West Virginia Court-Martial of Mother Jones”
-by JayRaye
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/3/10/1188855/-ACM-The-West-Virginia-Court-Martial-of-Mother-Jones
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