You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Thursday March 24, 1904
From The Brooklyn Daily Eagle: Louise Michel, the "Red Virgin," Dying in Paris
In an article today,
The Eagle expresses its disapproval of this former leader of the Paris Commune, and compares the "Petroleuse" to our own Mother Jones:
Louise Michel.
Louise Michel, "the red Virgin," and "the Petroleuse," is dying in Paris,. The name of this woman recalls the incidents of thirty years ago in which she was a figure, for she was a leader of the French Commune, that sought to repeat the horrors of the Revolution, in the name of liberty, equality and fraternity. The outrages of the Revolution were almost in the nature of an accident; they were never dreamed by those who had tried to organize the common people for freedom and justice; but almost from the beginning the Commune of Paris comported itself like a horde of savages.
It sought to attain its end by murder, assault, destruction of property, looting, setting fire to houses, and this interesting survival, Mlle. Michel, made public her intent of shooting Louis Napoleon. In this campaign of violence, which was to precede an era of love and peace, the wives and sisters of the communards were as active as the rest. They went armed, they put the flame to buildings and from the fact that they supplied kerosene whenever a house was to be destroyed, they gained the name of petroleuses. Women and men of this class together were rounded up by the troops and shot like dogs.
An interesting fact in all great and riotous uprisings against law and property is that women so often figure in them. This quality of leadership has existed from the time of Joan of Arc to Mother Jones, and from Judith to Carrie Nation there has been no lack of women to assume the initiative and undertake what men were reluctant to do. Harriet Beecher Stowe and Julia Ward Howe had as large a part as that of many statesmen, in beginning and continuing our Civil War.
It is the coupling of a highly emotional nature with the deep sincerity of natures more steadfast that makes women so lovable, and so dangerous. Louise Michel is looked upon by many of her countrymen as a devil. To her fellow communards she was an angel. It is to be said for her that she really believed in the torch, the bomb, and the pistol as agencies toward the higher life. Some seek this through prayer and meditation. She sought it through action. She was a truly French product, entirely feminine, withal and the fewer like her, the better off we are.
[paragraph breaks added]
SOURCE
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle
(Brooklyn, New York)
-of Mar 24, 1904
Photo: Louise Michel
http://www.marxists.org/...
See also: Louise Michel Archive, 1830-1905
http://www.marxists.org/...
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Tuesday March 24, 1914
From The Scranton Republican: General John Chase States Mother Jones Will Go to Jail
Earlier reports that Mother Jones would be confined in the County Hospital have proved to be incorrect. General Chase announced that he would "leave" her in jail this time:
MOTHER JONES WILL NOT BE PLACED IN HOSPITAL
DENVER, Col., March 23. Adjutant General John Chase said tonight that "Mother" Mary Jones, arrested at Walsenburg early today as she was on her way from Denver to Trinidad, would not again be placed in a hospital. "I shall either leave her in the county jail at Walsenburg or remove her to the county jail at Trinidad," he explained. "I expect to be at Walsenburg tomorrow and will examine the quarters in which Mrs. Jones is lodged.
"I understand Governor Ammons' orders are just the same as they were before-that 'Mother' Jones is to be imprisoned until she is ready to leave the strike zone."
SOURCE
The Scranton Republican
(Scranton, Pennsylvania)
-of Mar 24, 1914
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Monday March 24, 2014
More on Mother Jones in the Military Bastille at Walsenburg
In her Autobiography, Mother Jones described her arrest and imprisonment at the hands of the military commanded by Governor Ammons, Democrat of Colorado:
I stayed on a week in Denver. Then I got a ticket and sleeper for Trinidad. Across the aisle from me was Reno, Rockefeller's detective. Very early in the morning [March 23rd], soldiers awakened me.
"Get up," they said "and get off at the next stop!"
I got up, of course, and with the soldiers I got off at Walsenburg, fifty miles from Trinidad. The engineer and the fireman left their train when they saw the soldiers putting me off.
"What are you going to do with that old woman?" they said. "We won't run the train till we know!"
The soldiers did not reply. "Boys" I said, "go back on your engine. Some day it will be all right."
Tears came trickling down their cheeks, and when they wiped them away, there were long, black streaks on their faces.
I was put in the cellar under the courthouse. It was a cold, terrible place, without heat, damp and dark. I slept in my clothes by day, and at night I fought great sewer rats with a beer bottle. "If I were out of this dungeon," thought I, "I would be fighting the human sewer rats anyway!"
Confinement in this same cellar cell had recently resulted in the death of striking miner,
Kostas Markos.
SOURCE
The Autobiography of Mother Jones
-ed by Mary Field Parton
Charles H Kerr Pub, 1990
Pittston Strike Commemorative Edition
http://womenshistory.about.com/...
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They'll Never Keep Us Down-Hazel Dickens
We’ve been shot, we’ve been jailed, Lord, it’s a sin
Women and children stood right by the men
But we got a union contract that keeps the worker free
And they’ll never shoot that union out of me
They’ll never shoot that union out of me
They’ll never shoot that union out of me
Got a contract in our hand signed by the blood of honest men
And they’ll never shoot that union out of me.
-Hazel Dickens