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Hellraisers Journal – Friday January 9, 1914
Chicago, Illinois – President Moyer after Operation with Walker, Terzich and Riley
From Miners Magazine of January 8, 1914:
Tag: John H Walker
Hellraisers Journal: Chicago Day Book: Surgeons at St. Luke’s Hospital Remove Bullet From Charles Moyer-Will Recover
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Hellraisers Journal – Monday December 29, 1913
Chicago, Illinois – W. F. of M. President Charles Moyer Expected to Recover
From The Day Book of December 29, 1913:
———-
———-
———-
Hellraisers Journal: Poetry from the Miners’ Magazine: “Jungles” by Agnes Thecla Fair
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Hellraisers Journal – Monday October 27, 1913
“Jungles” by Agnes Thecla Fair, Girl Tramp, Author of Sour Dough’s Bible
From Miners’ Magazine of October 23, 1913:
Hellraisers Journal: From the Miners Magazine: Appeal to the Labor Movement from Michigan Copper District Union No. 16
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Hellraisers Journal – Friday September 5, 1913
Hancock, Michigan – W. F. of M. District Union No. 16 Appeals to Labor Movement
From the Miners Magazine of September 4, 1913
-Dan Sullivan, C. E. Hietala, and John H. Walker Sign Appeal to Labor Movement:
…..Now, we turn to you, the organized workers of this country, in our hour of need. We stand united, determined to win. We are fighting one of the richest mining corporations in the world. It is as heartless as it is rich.
We have nothing but empty hands, our wives and children. They are urging us on, helping in the struggle. A northern winter will soon be here. We must have food and fuel. We are fighting this battle for all. We are willing to endure any sacrifice. The copper barons hope to drive us back to the mines through the hunger of our wives and children That is the only thing that can defeat us. Bayonets do not scare us, and thugs won’t mine copper.
If the mine managers of this district knew that the American labor movement was behingd us, that you would not see us defeated for the lack of bread, the fight would be won now.
Speak so that the copper kings and the world will know that you are behind us in this strike with your dollars as well as sympathies…..
[Emphasis added.]
Hellraisers Journal: From the Miners Magazine: Notes from Michigan Strike Zone-Seeberville by Laura G. Cannon
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Hellraisers Journal – Friday August 29, 1913
“Notes from the Strike Zone” by Laura G. Cannon, The Seeberville Murders
From the Miners Magazine of August 28, 1913:
Hellraisers Journal: John H. Walker and John Mitchell Enter the Strike Zone of Michigan’s Copper Country
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Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday August 27, 1913
Michigan Copper Country – John Walker and John Mitchell Speak to Strikers
From The Calumet News of August 23, 1913:
Note: John Walker reported that the military presence in Michigan’s Copper Country is brutal, and that General Abbey’s troops are acting as:
scab herders, strike-breakers, and black-leg protectors..[who] have shot people in the back, browbeaten men and women, insulted women and girls, and after filling up on beer and whisky sent them by the mine owners, swaggered up and down the streets with their big guns and sabers, a disgrace to the rottenest government on earth, let alone ours……
Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for January 1903, Part II: Speaks at Convention of United Mine Workers, Meets with Socialists
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Hellraisers Journal – Sunday February 15, 1903
Mother Jones News Round-Up for January 1903, Part II
-Speaks at Miners’ Convention, Meets with Socialists
From The Indianapolis Journal of January 22, 1903:
TRIP LIGHT FANTASTIC
———-MINERS’ DELEGATES ATTEND BALL
AT TOMLINSON HALL.
———-
Early Adjournment of the Convention
in Order that the Auditorium
Could Be Cleared.
———-MOTHER JONES MAKES SPEECH
———-[…..]
The dance of the Indianapolis garment workers in Tomlinson Hall last night interfered with the session of the mine workers’ convention that was to have been held during the afternoon. In order that the Janitors might prepare the floor of the hall for the dance the convention adjourned at noon until 9 o’clock this morning, after a motion to omit the afternoon session had carried.
The morning session was a busy one during the earlier hours, but toward noon had resolved itself into speech-making. Mother Jones, the woman friend of the miners, who was enjoined by Judge Jackson’s order prohibiting inflammatory speeches in the coal-mining district, was called on for an address. Her speech was typical of the woman and socialistic in tone. Her recommendation to the miners was that they use their votes as citizens to change conditions In the trade. Mother Jones was pessimistic in her views on the possibility of friendly relations between capital and labor. She thinks there is such a gulf between the two classes that it can never be bridged except by a change in government. The miners could adjust the conditions by their vote, she said, if they voted right. Now miners in America are existing as miserably as the serfs in Russia, and will continue so until all of the changes are made in the government which she suggests, she insinuated in her speech…..
[Photograph added.]
From The Indianapolis News of January 22, 1903:
SOCIALISM’S VOICE IN MINERS CONVENTION
———-EXPRESSION ON GOVERNMENT
OWNERSHIP WANTED.
———-INITIATIVE AND REFERENDUM
———-
Miners Voted Unanimously Not to
Incorporate Their Organization
-Question of Co-Operative Stores
———-At the opening of the United Workers’ convention this morning, there was the first clash of the year between the conservatives and the Socialistic factions. It originated in a resolution from an obscure local union, favoring an expression of Government ownership of coal mines and railroads.
A motion on the part of the conservatives to table it brought on a long discussion, and many leaders of the two factions were heard.
The socialistic faction based its arguments on the anthracite strike and the combination of coal companies and railroads and that a tendency not to treat with miners “according to the laws of man or God” made it necessary for the Government to take some such action.
Delegate Walker, of Illinois, in a long speech, said that the coal companies and railroads were now in a combination injurious to the interests of the people, and were holding back coal to boost prices.
Delegate Lusk, of West Virginia, also charged heartless attitude of coal operators and railroads not only to the miners, but to the people.
The controversy was finally ended for the time, on a motion of Chris Evans, of Ohio, to refer the matter back to the committee.
[…..]
William R. Fairley, executive committeeman for the Alabama district, in a speech of some length, laid before the convention a grievance of the Alabama miners on the speech made yesterday by Mother Jones, in which, he claimed, she held them responsible for the appalling child labor conditions in Alabama. Mother Jones made a reply in which she said she did not hold the miners responsible only in so far as they cast votes for and elected members of agricultural classes to the Legislature, who permitted the infants to be worked and murdered by mill and mine owners. She ripped the State of Alabama up and down. At the close of the discussion Patrick Dolan, president of the Pittsburg district, moved that Fairley and Mother Jones kiss and make up. There was a great deal of laughter but no vote was taken…..
Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Speaks to Special Convention of the United Mine Workers of America, Part II
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Hellraisers Journal – Monday July 21, 1902
Indianapolis, Indiana – Mother Jones Speaks to Miners’ Convention, Part II
From the Minutes of U. M. W. A. Special Convention, Called to Consider the Anthracite Strike, Indianapolis, Indiana, July 17-19, 1902:
Mother Jones Addresses Convention
Saturday Morning, July 19, 1902[Part II of II]
Let me warn you right here and now that any fellow who is not willing to go up against all these forces [company gunthugs, injunctions, U. S. Marshals, courts and jails] had better stay out of West Virginia; don’t go over there, for we don’t want you unless you are willing. We want fighters, although we are conducting our business on peaceful lines and according to the Constitution of the United States.
I have wondered many times recently what Patrick Henry would say, Patrick Henry who said, “Give me liberty or give me death,” and who also said, “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,” if he could witness the things that are done in West Virginia in this day and age, in a state that is supposed to be under the Constitution of the United States? I say with him, “Give me liberty or give me death, for for liberty I shall die, even if they riddle my body with bullets after I am dead.”
My friends, you must emancipate the miners of West Virginia; they should be the barometer for you in the future. You have a task; go bravely home and take it up like men. Each one of you should constitute himself a missionary, each one should do his duty as a miner and as a member of this organization. Do your duty also as citizens of the United States, do your duty as men who feel a responsibility upon you, and remember, friends, that it is better to die an uncrowned free man than a crowned slave. You and I must protest against this injustice to the American people that we are suffering under in West Virginia and in Pennsylvania, and in other fields.
In West Virginia the attorney for the company in his argument said, when my case was up, “In strikes of the past we got the deputies, the marshals and the Federal troops out, and still the strikers won the strikes; but the moment the court came out with an injunction, then the strikers were whipped.” He said further that the injunction was the barricade behind which the operators can stand.
There is an acknowledgement that we have no show; that the injunction is used for the benefit of the ruling classes. Now remember when your candidates get up and tell you what good friends they are to the laboring class, you ask them to sit right down and take an oath that the first thing they will do when they get to Congress is to introduce a bill entitled, “No government by injunction.”
Now I want to say a word about the West Virginia comrades. A great deal has been said for and against them. Perhaps no one there knows them better than I do. No one has mingled with them more than I have, and no one has heard more of their tales of sorrow and their tales of hope. I have sat with them on the sides of the mountains and the banks of the rivers and listened to their tales.
One night a comrade from Illinois [John H. Walker] was going with me up the mountain side. I said, “John, I believe it is going to be very dark tonight,” and he said he thought it was, for only the stars were shining to guide us. When we got to the top of the mountain, besides the stars in the sky we saw other little stars, the miners’ lamps, coming from all sides of the mountains. The miners were coming there to attend a meeting in a schoolhouse where we had promised to meet them, and I said to John, “There comes the star of hope, the star of the future, the star that the astronomer will tell nothing about in his great works for the future ages; but that is the star that is lighting up the ages yet to come; there is the star of the true miner laying the foundation for a higher civilization, and that star will shine when all other stars will grow dim.”
We held a meeting there that night, and a braver band does not live on the face of this earth today than that band of men up there on the mountain top that night. And in their behalf I stand pleading with you here today. They have their faults, I admit, but no state ever produced nobler, truer, better men under the appalling circumstances and conditions under which they work. It matters not whether a miner is robbed in Illinois or in Virginia, in Indiana or in the anthracite region; they are all ours, and we must fight the battle for all of them. I think we will come out victorious in this fight, but it will only be for a while. Both sides will line up for the final conflict, and you must be ready for the fray. We have no time to lose.
Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for March 1912, Part I: Found Speaking in Illinois, Denver, Colorado and Tacoma, Washington
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Hellraisers Journal – Monday April 15, 1912
Mother Jones News Round-Up for March 1912, Part I
Found in Illinois, Denver, Colorado and Tacoma, Washington
From The Sibley Journal of March 1, 1912:
Walker to Head Miners.
The closing day of the Illinois Mine Workers’ state convention was featured by the announcement of election from the vote held December 14, 1911.
It was generally thought at that time that all the officers would be re-elected. There was but one exception in this, Paul Smith defeating Adolph Germer for the vice presidency. President Walker and Secretary Treasurer McDonald were re-elected by large majorities…..
Aside from the announcement of the election results, a two-hour address by ”Mother” Jones, a woman, eighty years old, who is a Socialist lecturer of national prominence and called the “Miners’ Mascot,” in which she denounced woman suffrage, was the feature. She declared that women are not mentally equipped to acquire a proper knowledge of politics, and she attributed the defeat of the recall in Colorado to the women voters. In closing her address, “Mother” Jones detailed the conditions brought about by the railroad strike in Colorado and asked the miners of Illinois to donate a benefit fund of $1,000 to the strikers. A committee was named to investigate the matter…..
[Photograph added.]
From The Illinois State Journal of March 2, 1912:
From the Denver Rocky Mountain News of March 5, 1912:
NORTHERN COLORADO COAL
STRIKE ENDS IN 8 MINES
———-6 KILLED, 10 MAIMED 100 BEATEN,
BLOODY RECORD OF WAR
———-
Strikebreakers’ Refusals to Quit Fields Cause
of Most Serious Outbreaks.
———-“Six men killed, ten maimed for life and more than 100 waylaid and beaten.” This is the record of bitterness between the opposing forces of the labor war in the Northern coal were from the ranks of both strikers and strike breakers…..
One of the striking features of the struggle occurred a few months ago, when “Mother Jones,” a well known national figure in the labor world, went into the district to organize the wives and sisters of the striking miners. She received an enthusiastic reception, but when the women attempted to carry out their ideas the strikers objected so strenuously that they were forced to abandon their militant plans for a campaign.
———-
From the Denver United Labor Bulletin of March 21, 1912:
“MOTHER” JONES LEAVES DENVER.
———-“Mother” Jones, who has been in Denver for several days, addressed the Federated Shopmen in their convention in Machinists’ hall this week. She is preparing to tour the northwest in the interests of the shopmen. She will go to Tacoma and then travel East as far as St. Paul.
Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for March 1902, Part I: Praised for Her Work on Behalf of the Socialists of Erie, Pennsylvania
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Hellraisers Journal – Monday April 7, 1902
Mother Jones News Round-Up for March 1902, Part I
Praised for Her Efforts on Behalf of the Socialist Party of Erie, Pennsylvania
From the New York Worker of March 2, 1902:
———-
The city campaign in Erie, Pa., closed on Tuesday, Feb. 18, after more than two months of the most energetic work, and the results are such as to satisfy the most sanguine. The vote for Mayor stands:
Hardwick, Rep, 4,291.
Warde, Socialist, 3,164.
Warfel, Dem., 1,512.
S. L. P., 163.The campaign has been one of “boring from within” in the trade union movement-that is, it has been a campaign of education on the Socialist view of the labor question, carried on in the closest harmony with the trade unions, without fear and without compromise. The ticket was composed of men tried in the work of the unions and proven true, headed by Geo. N. Warde of Cigar Makers No. 107, Jas. Wilson, Jr., of the Pattern Makers, H. C. Gould of Typographical No. 77, Julius Erstfeld of the Machinists’ Union, T. H. Mosher of the Carpenters, and G. F. Hibeck of the Molders.
The campaign was waged entirely on educational lines. Meetings were held every night, and in nearly every union hall in the city, and the addresses of the candidates and other speakers were of the straight, uncompromisingly Socialist order. The efforts of the local comrades were most effectively supplemented by Comrades Nic Geiger, A. M. Simons, August Klenke, and Mother Jones. Geiger was with us for ten days, Simons a week, and Klenke two weeks. Mother Jones stopped over with us three days, insisted on paying all her own expenses, and made two of her characteristic speeches, which were of incalculable value to the movement, one at the big labor carnival, the other in C. L. U. hall. The services of these comrades cost us nothing-because they were Socialists.
And Mrs. A. M. Simons [May Wood Simons] should not be omitted. She was with us for two weeks and did effective work for the cause, besides speaking a number of times. We could not utilize her to the extent she desired; because at this stage most of our meetings were held at noon time in the shops; but these two noble women have dispelled the prejudice against “women agitators,” and prepared the field for comrades of their sex. Mrs. Simons made the address at the carnival on ladies’ night. It was pronounced a masterly effort. She also made a deep impression at a big mass meeting in the Second Ward…..
[Photograph and emphasis added.]
