You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Saturday October 17, 1903
Cincinnati, Ohio - Mother Jones, "The laboring man is advancing every day."
Mother Jones was in Cincinnati for a few hours yesterday on her way to Chicago. This famous old labor agitator travels alone. While in Cincinnati she made this statement:
To advance the cause of labor and laboring people is my only object. I have for years studied carefully the labor question, and in all my speeches to the miners and others I advocated peace and efficient work as the sure road to success. My idea is that every laborer, man or woman, should be worthy of their hire. They should, out of each week or month's salary, save a few pennies, dimes or dollars. I am in hearty sympathy with the workingman, and in times of strikes or lockouts I make it my duty to go to the scene of trouble and lend my aid to the laborer and his family. They are my personal charges.
I think the day will come when capital will learn to respect laborers enough to pay them in proportion to the services they render. I am at all times an advocate of peace when disagreements arise between employer and employees, for that is the laborer's stronghold. If he can only hold out and remain peaceable the victory is won. It is a rare occurrence that anything is accomplished by the working men who cause strife and bloodshed. They lose the respect sympathy of those who would otherwise be with them in time of need.
I think the laboring man is advancing every day, and it will be my life work to aid in this advancement.
SOURCE
The Cincinnati Enquirer
(Cincinnati, Ohio)
-of Oct 17, 1903
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Friday October 17, 1913
From the Miners' Bulletin: "A Woman's Story" by Annie Clemenc of Calumet
Big Annie with her
American Flag
We are pleased to be able to reprint this entire article which was written by Annie Clemenc and appeared in the October 2nd edition of the
Miners' Bulletin:
At Seventh Street Tuesday morning a party of strikers met a man with a dinner bucket. I asked him: "Where are you going, partner?" He replied: "To work." "Not in the mine are you?" "You bet I am." after talking with him a while his wife came and took him down the street. She seemed very much afraid.
He had just gone when a couple of Austrians came along with their buckets. I stepped up to one I knew: "O! George, you are not going to work, are You? Come, stay with us. Don't allow that bad woman to drive you to work. Stick to us and we will stick to you." He stepped back, willing to comply with my request.
Then the deputies came, caught him by the shoulder and pushed him along, saying: "You coward, are you going back because a woman told you not to go to work?" The deputies, some eight or ten of them, pulled him along with them.
A militia officer, I think it was General Abbey, said: "Annie, you have to get away from here." "No, I am not going. I have a right to stand here and quietly ask the scabs not to go to work."
I was standing to one side of the crowd and he said: "You will have to get in the auto." "I won't go until you tell me the reason." Then he made me get in the auto. I kept pounding the automobile with my feet and asking what I was being taken to jail for. The officer said: "Why don't you stay at home?" "I won't stay at home, my work is here, nobody can stop me. I am going to keep at it until this strike is won." I was kept in jail from six-thirty until twelve, then released under bond.
Dear Readers, please note that Annie was arrested by the military only for talking quietly to the scabs. The deputies who man-handled the scab and forced him to go to work against his will were not in any way molested by the military.
This same issue of the Miners' Bulletin contains an affidavit sworn to and signed by 24 strikebreakers. They tell of being shipped into the Copper Country under false pretenses, of being beaten when they refused to work after they realized that a strike was on, of then being kept prisoner in a boarding house for refusing to work, and of not being paid for the work that they did do. These men were finally released, and then made their way to the Union Hall. They swore out their affidavit on Sept. 29 in Houghton County.
And thus, not only do the soldiers not prevent the deputies from making prisoners of imported workers who refuse to be turned into scabs, but the soldiers actively assists these deputies. In fact, many of the soldiers have been made deputies once their term of service ends.
SOURCE
Miners' Bulletin, No. 22
"Published by authority of Western Federation of Miners
to tell the truth regarding the strike of copper miners."
-of October 2, 1913
Note: Austrian was a general term used at the time to refer both to Croatians and to Slovenians. Annie was an American-born Slovenian who spoke both languages.
SOURCE
Annie Clemenc
& the Great Keweenaw Copper Strike
-by Lyndon Comstock
CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013)
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Thursday October 17, 2013
More on the Miners' Bulletin, the official newspaper of the Copper Strike of 1913.
Miner's Bulletin Newspaper, 8/13/1913-4/14/1914.
Published by the Western Federation of Miners
0.45 cubic feet 1 manuscript box (legal size)
"Published by the authority of Western Federation of Miners to tell the truth regarding
the strike of copper miners."
Miner's Bulletin newspaper, 8/13/1913-4/14/1914, published by the Western Federation
of Miners during the Copper Miners' Strike in Michigan's Copper Country.
Microfilm copy available for use.
From ArchiveGrid:
http://beta.worldcat.org/...
When I visited the Keweenaw many years ago, I was lucky enough to be able to print off many copies of the Miners' Bulletin. Would have printed all of it, but ran out of money. For anyone in that area of Michigan who wants to study this strike, this is the best resource possible!
Available here:
Van Pelt and Opie Library
1400 Townsend Drive
Houghton, MI 49931-1295
Ph. (906) 487-2508
Fax: (906) 487-2357
Email: library@mtu.edu
http://www.mtu.edu/...
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The Union Maid
You gals who want to be free, just take a tip from me;
Get you a man who's a union man and join the ladies' auxiliary.
Married life ain't hard when you got a union card,
A union man has a happy life when he's got a union wife.
-Woody Guthrie
Dedicated to Annie Clemenc, President of the Calumet WFM Women's Auxiliary, Local #15, and to all the women, some 800 in number, who were members of this or other Copper Country locals during the strike. They were true Hellraisers in the best tradition of Mother Jones. They were also card-carrying members of the Western Federation of Miners.