I would rather raise hell in this country than anywhere else on earth.
-Mother Jones
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Monday February 8, 1915
New York, New York - Mother Jones Takes on the Society Woman of the Colony Club
Mrs. J. Borden Harriman
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On the evening of February 3rd, Mother Jones visited the Colony Club, New York City's most fashionable women's club. She went at the invitation of Mrs. J. Borden Harriman, the only woman to sit on the Commission on Industrial Relations. Mrs. Harriman must now surely regret extending that invitation for the very next day Mother appeared at the hearings of the industrial commission and gave her opinion of the Colony Club and its denizens.
She berated them as "scandal cats" and "parasites." She noted that they walked right by the men shoveling snow outside their door without noticing their cold bare hands or thinly clad bodies. Once inside, the women displayed their fine gowns and bejeweled necks, wrists, and fingers. She said the smell of their perfume suffocated her and she made her escape as quickly as she could.
Needless to say, the Society Woman have responded most unfavorably to the criticism of Mother Jones. And the controversy continues to be published across the nation.
The vexation of the Society Women notwithstanding, we soon find Mother back where she belongs, with the working men and women of America. She spoke to members of the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union advising them on a few good uses for hatpins. She declared that if their demands are not met then they should strike, all 35,000 of them. As for the protocol of peace, she said that it is not they, but their employers, who have already broken with the protocol.
From the Chicago Day Book of February 4, 1915:
"MOTHER" JONES SEES RECORD BUNCH OF SCANDAL CATS
New York, Feb. 4.-"Mother" Jones veteran labor agitator, has investigated New York's fashionable Colony club, at Madison av. and 30th st. She went there last night at the invitation of Mrs. J. Borden Harriman, member of the federal commission on industrial relations. Today she was bubbling over with her experiences.
[She said:]
I saw the biggest bunch of women parasites and scandal cats ever gotten together under one roof...Five hundred dollar hats, wonderfully feathered, adorned empty heads of women who know nothing of how the other half lives. Their fingers were encircled with jewels worth a king's ransom. And not a single one of these parasites knew anything useful. They were ornamental dolls-mannikins who walked and talked but said nothing.
And outside there were men shoveling snow, their hands bare and their clothing thin. Yet there was not the slightest sympathy expressed anywhere for these men.
I got out as fast as I could. The smell of the perfume sickened and suffocated me.
[photograph added]
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