You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Sunday April 16, 1905
Houghton, Michigan - Mother Jones Arrives to Assist Strikers and WFM Organizers
Mother Jones has arrived in Michigan's Copper Country where the Western Federation of Miners has been attempting to organize the copper miners. She is much needed in that effort where the miners face discharge and blacklisting whenever they attempt to organize.
The streetcar workers of that area are also in need of Mother's assistance. They have been on strike since February 25th, and Mother will, no doubt, encourage them to stand strong in their strike. The strike is against the Houghton County Traction Company, and is being led by the Amalgamated Association of Street and Electric Railway Employees.
Newspapers around the nation are reporting on the arrival of our most famous "labor agitator." We offer two examples below.
From The New York Times of April 15, 1905:
MOTHER JONES IN MICHIGAN.
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Street Railway and Copper Mine
Strikers Call Her to State.
HOUGHTON, Mich., April 14.-Mrs. Mary Jones, known as "Mother" Jones, a labor agitator, arrived in the copper country to-day, drawn by the street railway and mine strikes. Because of her efforts as an organizer of miners in the Colorado labor troubles she was deported. She will speak in the copper-country towns.
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From The Minneapolis Journal of April 15, 1905:
OPERATORS WILL NOT TEMPORIZE
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COPPER MINES WILL BE CLOSED
ABSOLUTELY IF MEN STRIKE.
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No Concessions Will Be Considered and Owners
Will Prepare for an Indefinite Siege-
Federation Organizers Believed to Be Quietly
Agitating a General Strike.
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Special to The Journal.
Houghton, Mich., April 15,-In expectation of a general strike on May 1, the mine operators of Houghton, Keweenaw and Ontonagon counties have decided in case of a walkout to make no concessions whatever, and close down absolutely for an indefinite period.
The conservative element among the Calumet & Hecla employees are laboring hard to prevent a strike. In case of a general strike the old men may not get their jobs back when a settlement is reached.
"Mother" Jones is here and Charles Moyer, president of the Western Federation of Miners, has been a visitor. The federation organizers say they are not agitating a strike, but the evidence is to the contrary.
Sixteen thousand men would be affected directly, and as many more indirectly by a general strike.
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[Photograph added.]
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SOURCES
The New York Times
(New York, New York)
-Apr 15, 1905
http://www.newspapers.com/...
The Minneapolis Journal
(Minneapolis, Minnesota)
-Apr 15, 1905
http://www.newspapers.com/...
IMAGES
Mother Jones
http://www.biography.com/...
Charles Moyer
http://darrow.law.umn.edu/...
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More on WFM & SPA* Organizing in Upper Michigan, 1903-05
From:
Rebels on the Range
-by Arthur W Thurner
MI, 1984
http://www.calumetcopper.com/...
When the WFM made its first move into the Lake Superior region, it had about 30,000 members. The U.S. metal-mining industry then employed about 120,000 workers. In September, 1903, Joy Pollard union organizer, arrived in the Copper Country where strike breakers were being recruited. Craft union members and A. T. Schmelzer of Lake Linden, brother of WFM Executive Board member from Silverton, Colorado, introduced him to local copper workers who advised him to organize Calumet men first. As he visited iron mines in Michigan and Wisconsin subsequently he heard the same message: "Get Calumet or the Copper boys and we will all follow."
Pollard visited twenty-eight communities and locations in the Copper Country and, on January 31, 1904, organized the first WFM local in the district at Laurium. It was called Amygdaloid Miners' Union No. 217. M. E. Condon was its first president. Other locals formed during his stay were Smeltermen's Union No. 218 at Lake Linden. Quincy Miners' Union No. 76 at Hancock, Champion Miners' Union No. 221 at Painesdale, and Conglomerate No. 226 at Allouez. District Union No. 10 headquartered at Lake Linden.
On May 17, 1904, Martin Nortvedt, Loughlin J. Kelly, and Patrick Shea reported from Laurium that their local did not have funds to send a delegate to the WFM convention and that "any delegate would lose his position and be blacklisted in Houghton County, and as union is in infancy they would have no redress." Socialist orientation of the local leaders was evident in the letters which stated: "Classes will disappear...the working class must become the dominant class...March to the polls."
Socialist activity in the Michigan copper district, best described as nascent when Pollard arrived, began to stir in 1904. The Laurium Socialist Club was formed in early 1904 and at mid-year Finnish members decided to create a Finnish branch of it. James Carey, prominent Massachusetts socialist lectured at Calumet in April on the future of socialism, and socialists competed in a Houghton County election that month. Candidates included men of German, Scandinavian, French, Irish, and Italian descent..Tyomies, the newspaper of socialist persuasion established by Finns in July, 1903, in Worcester, Massachusetts, moved in 1904 to Hancock which became a center of Finnish socialist activity.
When Pollard returned to the Copper Country in the spring of 1905, the Allouez local was extinct and the others barely alive. He and Matt Wasley, an organizer from Negaunee, Michigan, worked with little success to resuscitate them. They had some help from Mary Harris Jones, the coal miners' Mother Jones, who had come north to aid members of the Amalgamated Association of Street and Electric Railway Employees who had been on strike at Houghton County Traction Company since February 25.
*Socialist Party of America
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The Spirit of Mother Jones - Andy Irvine
Mother Jones, the Miners' Angel must be treated with respect
She's an old fashioned lady, and you never would suspect
That this gown and this bonnet would fill a rich man full of dread
"She's the most dangerous woman in America," they said.
-Andy Irvine
See Also:
Spirit of Mother Jones Festival July 2014
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