You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Friday October 28, 1904
From the Mt Carmel, Pennsylvania, Daily News: Mother Jones Advises Wives
The Daily News has been reporting on Mother Jones as she tours the coal towns of Pennsylvania. Speaking at a mass meeting in Mahanoy City Tuesday evening, Mother gave some shocking advice to women whose husbands are past the age of 35, the age at which Andrew Carnegie believes the working man is no longer fit to be employed:
MOTHER JONES SAYS
KILL YOUR HUSBANDS
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"Mother" Jones, in addressing a mass meeting of miners and their wives at Mahanoy City last evening, said:
If there are any women present whose husbands are more than thirty-five years old, let them get busy and kill them quick. Andrew Carnegie, the commercial cannibal, now on his way from Skibo Castle, in Auld Reekie, has decreed that men are unfit for employment after they have reached that age.
Wednesday's
Daily News also reported on preparations among the miners to celebrate
John Mitchell Day:
NOTIFICATION TO COAL OPERATORS
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Notices were sent out today from the headquarters of the United Mine Workers to the various coal companies notifying them that Saturday, October 29, will be generally observed as Mitchell Day.
While the notices will not be formally accepted, it is believed the miners will remain idle. The Lehigh Valley Coal Company has signified its attitude by saying the collieries will remain idle to permit the employes to celebrate the day, but it is said that some of the companies will attempt to operate their collieries.
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Will Test Union Strength
President William Dettrey, of district 7, yesterday notified the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company that the United Mine Workers would remain away from the Panther Creek Valley collieries Saturday in honor of Mitchell Day. The company will work its collieries as usual, and, as there will be a big demonstration held there on that day, it is understood that the strength of the union in the valley will be demonstrated by the number of men who fail to report for duty. Mine officials claim the union is weak there, while the mine workers say it is stronger than ever.
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May Work Mitchell Day
It is just possible that some of coal companies in the Lackawanna and Lehigh regions will try to operate the collieries on Saturday next, Mitchell Day. It is not known that they have considered the matter, but what decision has been reached could not be learned. Some of the operators are under the impression that a number of the miners who have fallen away from the union and those who never were connected with it will work on that day if they decide to operate. That the union has declared October 29th a holiday in honor of President Mitchell, will not, they claim, have any weight with the men not now affiliated with the organization.
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Yesterday's
Daily News reported the upcoming schedule of Mother Jones:
"Mother" Jones Schedule.
"Mother" Jones will speak at McAdoo this evening, and on Friday evening at Gilberton, and at Pottsville probably Saturday evening.
On Sunday she and C. F. Foley, of Pottsville, will speak at Mt. Carmel and Shamokin.
On Monday, they go to Wm. Penn and Tuesday to Shenandoah.
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SOURCE
The Daily News
(Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania)
Oct 26 & 27, 1904
http://www.newspapers.com/...
http://www.newspapers.com/...
IMAGES
Mother Jones
http://www.britannica.com/...
John Mitchell
http://commons.wikimedia.org/...
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Wednesday October 28, 1914
Washington, D. C. - Mother Jones Speaks on Behalf of Colorado Miners
From yesterday's Washington Herald:
COLORADO STRIKE HORRIBLE AS WAR
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Mother Jones, Seeking Relief for Miners,
Calls It Cruel as European Conflict.
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WARNS OF THE FUTURE
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Hopes to Procure Aid "for Starving Men and Women,
Hungry for Food and Justice."
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Mother Jones Leads Parade in Trinidad, Colorado
[Statement of Mother Jones:]
With its eyes upon the war in Europe, the United States seems to have forgotten about the war in Colorado, but should the people of this nation turn their gaze upon Colorado they would find war in the coal mine strike region just as horrible and just as cruel as the European conflict, even though on a smaller scale.
This was the statement made by Mother Jones, friend of the miners, upon her arrival in Washington last night from the Colorado strike region. Mother Jones journeyed to the National Capital to interview members of Congress "for the starving men and women out in Colorado, hungry for food as well as for justice, looking to Washington for aid."
[Mother Jones further states:]
There are between 6,000 and 7,000 in the Colorado strike...and they are camped in a tent colony, with United States troops camped near by. Yes, it is war, all right. Gunmen have been imported to carry on the fight against the miners, and these importations involve interstate commerce. Machine guns have been shipped from West Virginia to Colorado. The operators have a well-organized army.
`
Says Wilson Spoke the Truth.
Mother Jones in Military Bastille
at Walsenburg, Colorado
President Wilson spoke truth the other day when he said: "The opinion of the world is the mistress of the world." But how is the world's opinion formed? How is the opinion of President Wilson formed? With his classic mind, his culture gleaned from the pinnacles of learning and not from the depths of hard, cruel experience, he cannot see the miner's side of the story. But could the President live, eat, sleep and work among the miners as I have then would he understand what a menace to the nation is embodied in this war.
It is true that the opinion of the world is mistress of the world and I pray for another Hugo who might write a book of the working man, a book that would help form that world opinion which is mistress. I pray that the working men of this nation and, in fact, all of the nation can be properly educated-opinion properly formed-before a great disastrous war breaks out. There would have been no civil war had there been ten more years of education, ten more years of opinion forming along right lines.
There would now be no war in Europe had the mothers of the world properly molded the opinions of their sons-started their boys thinking in the right direction. Here, in this country, our mothers are attending to home and foreign mission work, charities, suffrage for women and scores of other things, and neglecting to mold their boy's thought so that he will be a valuable citizen to his nation-a citizen who will fight with his brains and not with his brawn.
But I warn you, West Virginia, Michigan, and Colorado are but the signal fires of a vast army of discontent, and in this vast army are men who are learning how to use instruments of force. May the day never come when the working man, knowing well the strength of the instrument of force, will rise to use it against his nation.
Mother Jones will remain in Washington several days and will interview Secretary of Labor Wilson, Secretary of War Garrison, members of Congress and others in an effort to "start some movement for the relief and redress of the Colorado miners."
President Wilson told callers at the White House yesterday that withdrawal of Federal troops from the Colorado strike district is not contemplated "at present." Just when the President will act as a result of the situation confronting the government by reason of the failure of the operators to compromise with the men is not known.
[photographs added]
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SOURCE
The Washington Herald
(Washington, D. C.)
Oct 27, 1914
http://www.newspapers.com/...
IMAGES
Mother Jones Leads Parade in Trinidad
http://zinnedproject.org/...
Mother Jones in Cold Cellar Cell
https://archive.org/...
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Aragon Mil - Craver Hicks Watson Newberry
There's no children at all in the narrow, empty streets
Since the looms have all gone and it's so quiet I can't sleep.
Now I'm too old to work and I'm too young to die
And there's no place to go for my woman and I.
-Si Kahn
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Wed Oct 29, 2014 at 9:08 AM PT: Note: This article is added here at this time because I decided that I did not want to detract from the main story of Hellraisers' for Oct 29th, namely, the meeting of Mother Jones with President Wilson.-JayRaye
From The Labor World of Oct 29, 1904:
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/...
AGE LIMIT FOR LABOR DISCUSSED BY PRESS
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Action of Carnegie Steel Plant Managers Arouses Sever Criticism.
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May Force Workingmen to Think and Stir Them to Take Political Action
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The Carnegie steel plant, which may be described as the principal claw of the Steel Trust octopus, has sent out a circular very instructive to American citizens.
That circular instructs the managers as to the employment of men.
In many departments no man over thirty-five years of age can be taken on the payroll.
In other departments the age limit is extended to forty years.
It is a very interesting piece of civilized news, isn't it?
A man is shut out of the possibility of earning a living if he happens to be over thirty-five or forty years of age.
If a man should leave the works to try to better himself he could not get back, unless he could prove himself youthful enough to please. The man that worked for Carnegie twenty or twenty-five years ago cannot work for the Carnegie steel mills now-he can go and read for nothing in a free Carnegie library, if he wants to keep busy. Perhaps that fact will comfort him.
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* * *
Perhaps those who read this order of the Steel Trust, notifying men that they must not hope to make a living during the last twenty-five or thirty years of their lives, will judge labor union regulations a little more leniently. They will understand, perhaps, why the unions find it necessary to protect their men against arbitrary discharge, and why they try to prevent overcrowding in the various lines of mechanical work.
It is very easy, of course, for the trust to turn away the man forty-five years old, and tell him that his days of work are over. But, somehow, the man himself has a different feeling about it, and he expresses that feeling in the rules of his union.
A very hopeful possibility in this ruling about old men is this-
It may get through their heads the fact that they have got to be interested in politics that they have got to vote as workingmen-not only in their little union, but in that great union called the United States Government.
If American workmen could know what the labor vote has done in New Zealand, with its old age pensions, and its fair taxes, we should soon have in this country the right kind of political activity among workingmen.
If we had that activity, the Steel Trust, which an honest government could impress very effectually, would think twice before barring the man forty-one years old out of a chance to make al living.-Exchange Journal.
----------
Wed Oct 29, 2014 at 9:08 AM PT: Note: This article is added here at this time because I decided that I did not want to detract from the main story of Hellraisers' for Oct 29th, namely, the meeting of Mother Jones with President Wilson.-JayRaye
From The Labor World of Oct 29, 1904:
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/...
AGE LIMIT FOR LABOR DISCUSSED BY PRESS
----------
Action of Carnegie Steel Plant Managers Arouses Sever Criticism.
----------
May Force Workingmen to Think and Stir Them to Take Political Action
----------
The Carnegie steel plant, which may be described as the principal claw of the Steel Trust octopus, has sent out a circular very instructive to American citizens.
That circular instructs the managers as to the employment of men.
In many departments no man over thirty-five years of age can be taken on the payroll.
In other departments the age limit is extended to forty years.
It is a very interesting piece of civilized news, isn't it?
A man is shut out of the possibility of earning a living if he happens to be over thirty-five or forty years of age.
If a man should leave the works to try to better himself he could not get back, unless he could prove himself youthful enough to please. The man that worked for Carnegie twenty or twenty-five years ago cannot work for the Carnegie steel mills now-he can go and read for nothing in a free Carnegie library, if he wants to keep busy. Perhaps that fact will comfort him.
----------
* * *
Perhaps those who read this order of the Steel Trust, notifying men that they must not hope to make a living during the last twenty-five or thirty years of their lives, will judge labor union regulations a little more leniently. They will understand, perhaps, why the unions find it necessary to protect their men against arbitrary discharge, and why they try to prevent overcrowding in the various lines of mechanical work.
It is very easy, of course, for the trust to turn away the man forty-five years old, and tell him that his days of work are over. But, somehow, the man himself has a different feeling about it, and he expresses that feeling in the rules of his union.
A very hopeful possibility in this ruling about old men is this-
It may get through their heads the fact that they have got to be interested in politics that they have got to vote as workingmen-not only in their little union, but in that great union called the United States Government.
If American workmen could know what the labor vote has done in New Zealand, with its old age pensions, and its fair taxes, we should soon have in this country the right kind of political activity among workingmen.
If we had that activity, the Steel Trust, which an honest government could impress very effectually, would think twice before barring the man forty-one years old out of a chance to make al living.-Exchange Journal.
----------
Wed Oct 29, 2014 at 9:12 AM PT: And exactly why update published twice, I do not know!