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Hellraisers Journal – Sunday September 21, 1913
“Mother Jones of the Revolution” by Kate Richards O’Hare
From the Miners Magazine of September 18, 1913:
Tag: Kansas City MO
Hellraisers Journal: Industrial Workers of the World Declares Great Victory in the Kansas City Free Speech Fight
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Hellraisers Journal – Saturday November 11, 1911
Kansas City, Missouri – Walker C. Smith Describe I. W. W. Victory
From the Spokane Industrial Worker of November 9, 1911:
KANSAS CITY HAS BEEN PLACED ON THE MAP
—————(Walker C. Smith)
Kansas City is built on a bluff, but they can’t bluff the I. W. W.
The I. W. W. has succeeded in putting K. C. on the map and today in that hilly village the principal topic of conversation in the One Big Fighting Union of the working class. It is conceded that the authorities had to back down and they made quite a neat job of it. Chief of Police Griffin, Judge Burney and Clark, together with the public persecutor, saved their face through the medium of the Board of Public Welfare. The board consists of well meaning, old fossils, recently retired from the cockroach strata of society, who spend their time and the “dear public’s” money in sprinkling cologne on the dunghills of capitalism or in poulticing boils on the body politic. With the threat of “ONE THOUSAND MEN FOR THANKSGIVING DINNER AT LEED’S FARM” haunting them like a specter, these souphouse reformers went straight up in the air, Kansas City under normal conditions cannot care for its “unfortunates” and the present business depression, coupled with threatened I. W. W. invasion made these sentimental gentlemen throw up their lily white hands in holy horror.
On Wednesday night with six arrests, the “hobo agitators” numbered two dozen. These boys were kangarooed to the tune of $500 each for which they thanked the judge in sarcastic terms. One of them, charged with speaking on the street so as to blockade traffic, stutters so it took him several minutes to tell his name and occupation.
Trifles like this, however, never block the road of capitalist justice. This last haul filled all available space at the municipal farm and since then no further arrests have been made although the meetings are being held exactly as heretofore. On Friday night the speaking started at Sixth and Main, as usual, and the box was moved up to 12th and Grand. This is the busiest section and the crowd that had followed the speakers and singers, together with those who quickly gathered, became so large as to block traffic for the first time. Coyle, Saunders, Lyons and myself were the speakers and the cop on the beat-well, he beat it accompanied by the jeers of the crowd. Saturday was spent in putting out “Bulletin No 1,” which was a statement of the position of the I. W. W.
On Saturday morning G. E. B. member Tom Halero and I, went to the board to get permit to see the boys on Sunday. We were told to return at 3 p. m. and upon doing so were taken down to the office of the chief of police. Some of the members of the board were there and they endeavored to maneuver it into a conference with Halero and myself protesting that we had no power to take action and telling them that the men in jail were the only ones who could settle the fight. Not withstanding this the conference continued for three hours and assumed the appearance of a treaty council between equal powers. It conclusively demonstrated the tremendous power of organized might and clearly showed that we are building the new society within the shell of the old. We are gaining general recognition as a fighting force disputing control with the powers that be…..
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Hellraisers Journal: IWW Prisoners of Kansas City Free Speech Fight Paroled from Leeds Farm, Most Leave Town
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Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday November 8, 1911
Kansas City, Missouri – Twenty-Four Fellow Workers Released from Leeds Farm
From The Kansas City Times of November 6, 1911:
THE I. W. W. SAY GOOD-BY.
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A Few of the Street Speakers Who
Remain Here Have Gone to Work.
Most of the twenty-four members of the Industrial Workers of the World who were paroled last Wednesday from the Leeds Farm have left the city for warmer climes. A few have obtained work in the city and say they will remain here until another free speech fight calls them away.
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Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for September 1920, Part I: “Famous Woman Leader of Miners” Found in Missouri and Illinois
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Hellraisers Journal – Saturday October 23, 1920
Mother Jones News for September 1920, Part I
“Famous Woman Leader of Miners” Found in Missouri and Illinois
From the United Mine Workers Journal of September 1, 1920:
Labor Day Speakers
Notice of the following assignments of speakers for celebrations of the United Mine Workers of America on Labor Day have been received at the office of the Journal:
Philip Murray, International Vice President, New Kensington, Pa .
William Green, International Secretary Treasurer, Cambridge, Ohio.
Ellis Searles, Editor of the United Mine Workers Journal, Ernest, Pa.
Samuel Pascoe, President of District 30, Novinger, Mo.
Andrew Steele, International Board Member from District 25, South Fork, Pa.
William Turnblazer, International Organizer, Spadra, Ark.
Mother Jones, Kirksville, Mo.
William Feeney, International Organizer, Midland, Ark[Photograph added.]
Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones 1898, Part II: June-December; Found in Kansas and Nebraska
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Hellraisers Journal – Saturday February 11, 1899
-Mother Jones News Round-Up for the Year 1898, Part II
October 9, 1898
In the pages of the Appeal to Reason of July 2, 1898, Mother Jones was found as “Mary G. Jones” on the list of delegates who bolted the Convention of the Social Democracy, held in Chicago during June of 1898. The disgruntled delegates immediately set about to establish a rival organization called the “Social Democratic Party of America,” and are now calling for “every loyal supporter of socialist principles” to “promptly come to the front and join” the new party. Mother Jones finds herself in good company as Eugene V. Debs and his brother, Theodore, are among the prominent Socialists who have joined the newly founded S. D. P.
July 1898 also found Mother Jones speaking in Omaha to packing house strikers. It was reported that she was speaking as “a traveling representative of the paper known as the “Appeal to Reason.”
In October 1898, Mother Jones was found in the “two Kansas Citys” preaching socialism along with Mrs. Anna Ferry Smith of San Diego. It was reported that the two women had traveled by a horse-drawn wagon from Chicago, speaking on street corners along the way.
In December 1898, Mother Jones was found leaving Kansas City and heading towards Texas “in a prairie schooner drawn by one white horse.” She was next found in Fort Scott and Mound City, Kansas. The Mound City Torch reported:
She is on her road to Texas, traveling in a private carriage alone. She is distributing literature and lecturing on needed reforms as she goes.
Hellraisers Journal: Thomas H. West, Labor Poet, on Soldiers Gone Scabbing against the Kansas City Street Car Strikers
Any soldier who is guilty
Can be called a “Labor Hun.”
-Thomas H. West
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Hellraisers Journal – Monday January 13, 1919
Kansas City Labor Poet on Soldiers, in Uniform, Serving as Scabs
Thomas H. West, in his latest poem for working men and women, tells the sad story of soldiers gone scabbing against the street car strikers of Kansas City. The poem is entitled “Uniforms Disgraced” and was first published by the Labor Herald of Kansas City, Missouri.
From the Leavenworth Labor Chronicle of January 10, 1919:
Hellraisers Journal: Kansas City Railway Company’s Ad: Scabs Wanted, “Those with no previous training also desired.”
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Hellraisers Journal – Sunday December 22, 1918
Kansas City Street Car Strike Continues, Scabs Wanted
Of the 2700 strikers, members of the Amalgamated Association of Street and Electric Railway Employes of America, Division 764, on strike in Kansas City since December 11th, 157 are conductorettes. The conductorettes have been on the picket line beside their brothers and not one of them has crossed the line and returned to work. Meanwhile the company advertises for scabs, “no previous training” needed.
From the Kansas Junction City Union of December 21, 1918:
It should be noted that ever since the cars have been operated by non-union men, accidents and deaths on the street car lines have dramatically increased. Yet, the Company prefers to hire inexperienced scabs rather than implement the cost-of-living award granted to their employees by the War Labor Board.
Hellraisers Journal: William Z Foster on the Alschuler Award: “How Life Has Been Brought into the Stockyards,” Part III
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Hellraisers Journal, Sunday April 7, 1918
Victory! for Packinghouse Workers by William Z. Foster, Part III
From Life and Labor of April 1918:
HOW LIFE HAS BEEN BROUGHT
INTO THE STOCKYARDS
A Story of the Reorganization of the Packing IndustryWilliam Z. Foster
Secretary Chicago Stockyards Labor CouncilThe main questions, touching wages, hours and conditions of labor, involved in the Stockyards arbitration hearing before Judge Alschuler, and his decision concerning them, are of overwhelming importance, both in principle and in consequence. Just how far-reaching will be the results of the decision one cannot now forecast. But lips stiffened by poverty will perhaps now learn to smile, and thousands of families will for the first time taste of life.
[Part III]
THE SHORTER WORKDAY
A big battle raged around the question of the eight hour day. In this measure’ the packers saw typified the victory so earnestly sought by the workers. They bent every effort to defeat it. Although compelled to admit the justice, economy and inevitability of the eight hour day as a general proposition, they exhausted every pretext to prevent its consideration, for very obvious reasons, till after the war.
Their strong argument was that, due to the irregular supply of cattle, sheep and hogs, and the limited capacities of the plants, introduction of the eight hour day could only be brought about after months and years of rebuilding and other preparation. To establish it suddenly now would be disastrous. It would reduce the production of vitally necessary foodstuffs full 20 per cent. This would involve starvation for the boys in the trenches and very possibly the loss of the war.
To establish this contention the brainiest superintendents in the packing business piled complexities upon complications. But their efforts were in vain. The workers met and defeated them at every point. Samuel Gompers and Victor A. Olander made the general argument for the shorter workday, and a masterful one it was. Dennis Lane, John Kennedy, Martin Murphy, Tim McCreash, John Joyce and Joseph Selkirk, all skilled butchers, applied it to the packing houses. These union workers destroyed every technical objection raised by the superintendents, checking them one by one. Once, in the midst of the arbitration, they even went to Kansas City to ascertain the exact capacity of certain departments of the packing plants in that city. They routed the experts, horse, foot and dragoons, and proved beyond all question of doubt the practicability and economy of immediately establishing the eight hour day in the packing industry. At the first hour, seeing they were defeated, the packers urged the administrator in case he saw fit to shorten the workday, to make it apply only to the skilled trades—an insidious attack on the unions that did not pass without thorough exposure.
WE NEVER FORGET: Lon Amos Millsap Who Lost His Life in Freedom’s Cause, Kansas City General Strike of 1918
Pray for the dead
and fight like hell for the living.
-Mother Jones
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Lon Amos Millsap, Labor Martyr
Kansas City General Strike, March 29, 1918
On March 29, 1918, Lon Amos Millsap, striking laundry truck driver, gave up his life in Kansas City Research Hospital. He died of a gunshot wound to the abdomen. The kept press claims that the strikers had been rioting (throwing rocks) when fired upon by armed company guards at the Globe Laundry two days earlier, March 27th, the first day of the Kansas City General Strike.
Lon Amos Millsap was born October 28, 1885, in Platte County, Missouri. At the time of his death he was 32 years old, single and a striking laundry driver. He is buried at Mount Washington Cemetery at Independence, Missouri.
M. L. Millsap, address: 2728 Brooklyn, provided the personal information for the death certificate, and was most likely a relative.
Buried in the same cemetery is the mother of Lon Millsap, Nancy Belle Heller Millsap, who died on July 27, 1927, at age 76. His father was John S. Millsap, date of death not known.
Hellraisers Journal: Kansas City Striker, Lon Amos Millsap, Dies in Hospital from Gunshot Wound to Abdomen
Pray for the dead
and fight like hell for living.
-Mother Jones
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Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday April 2, 1918
Kansas City, Missouri – Lon Amos Millsap, Labor Martyr
Lon Amos Millsap, striking laundry truck driver, gave up his life in Kansas City Research Hospital on Friday March 29th. He died of a gunshot wound to the abdomen. The kept press claims that the strikers were rioting when they were fired upon by armed guards at the Globe Laundry. Two other strikers were injured but are expected to live.
The following articles tell of the shooting and of the death of Brother Millsap.
From The Fort Scott Tribune of March 28, 1918
-Inset added is from The Leavenworth Post of March 31, 1918:
TROOPS TO CURB STRIKE.
—–RIOTING IN KANSAS CITY STRIKE,
WHICH IS SPREADING SLOWLY.
—–THREE WOUNDED YESTERDAY
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Strikers Wrecked Laundries and Restaurants,
and Stoned Street Cars;
Not So Many Disorders Today.
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