Rise up in this glorious hour and hold your babies toward the skies
and vow that you will win them freedom!
-Mother Jones
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Saturday January 23, 1915
Roosevelt, New Jersey - Mother Jones Encourages Strikers Wives to Stay in the Fight
From the New York Tribune of January 22, 1915:
Above: Mother Jones with the strikers wives in Roosevelt.
Below: Fred Haslam, who was shot in the leg, with his brothers and sisters.
Men and Women at Roosevelt Apathetic at Mass Meeting
Until Told of Death of Second Victim
of Deputies' Bullets.
(From a Staff Correspondent of The Tribune.)
Roosevelt, N. J., Jan. 21.-Do you know what a striker looks like?
Five hundred of them were huddled into Van Ness Hall, in Chrome, Borough of Roosevelt, yesterday by their organizers, and there they waited for instructions and encouragement, at a complete loss concerning the ethics, the plans and the outcome of their campaign against their employers.
In the two front rows sat the wives of strikers, wearing multi-colored head-cloths and scarfs, with infants nursing or sitting in their laps. The two and three year olds sat on the floor or toddled along the aisles.
Joseph Tylkoff, the A. F. L. organizer, who had called the meeting, rapped on the table and began:
Sisters and Brothers-Before we begin I have some very sad news to tell. One of our brothers who was shot died to-day at noon in the hospital. It was Carman Patty.
There was not a movement in the audience. Then two interpreters rose and repeated the announcement in Italian and Hungarian, and the men and the women, every one of them, stood and bowed their heads. The lips of many of them moved as they made the sign of the cross over their hearts.
Mother Jones Has Word.
The important speaker of the day was Mother Jones, the old Joan of Arc of all American labor revolutions, who has faced the guns of the guards in Colorado, Michigan and Virginia. She had come to Roosevelt Borough to say to the boys:
This is the first time that the public is in sympathy with the laborer's cause, and it must not be spoiled by either violence or treason.
Mother Jones has snow-white hair and wears a bonnet of black silk and jet, but she can speak with earnestness and vigor.
[She said:]
This battle is as old as time..We are forever losing our babes, our homes, and our lives in it, but to fight and fight and fight honorably is better than to remain slaves.
The strikers remained perfectly passive before her appeal. They knew only that they had come to this country for riches and comfort; that they were getting neither, and that Mother Jones was one of the experts from the West who knew how to bring these coveted things to them.
[She continued:]
What difference does it make to me..whether I die here on this platform to-day fighting for liberty, or ten days or ten months from now?
We're going to win this strike. All that I ask you to do is to stand shoulder to shoulder, and to help the officers of the law to keep order. Don't carry any guns. I want you to leave the guns and sticks alone.
Leave the saloons alone, too! They'll try to feed you liquor and they'll try everything to make you weaken, but wait till you win the fight. When you win we'll all get drunk.
Then Mother Jones stepped down from the platform and put her arm about the neck of one of the women. She patted her cheek and kissed her child and the woman wept. She said:
You Women Can Win
You women can win this strike if you want to. It's up to you to be patient and to keep your husbands contented. Make them stay in the ranks. Don't let them go scabbing with the sewer rats.
Do you realize...that if the strike is broken these children go to slavery? Rise up in this glorious hour and hold your babies toward the skies and vow that you will win them freedom!
With Mother Jones on the platform were Max Eastman, Mrs. Max Eastman, John R. Lawson, of the International Executive Board; E. L. Doyle, secretary and treasurer of the Colorado district of the United Mine Workers, Amos Pinchot and several A. F. of L. organizers and interpreters.
They had been met at the Chrome station by a deputation of strikers, who cheered when their leader gave the signal, and then fell into line and accompanied Mother Jones to the hall. A car, trimmed with a couple of flags, had been hired to carry her, for the distance from the station to the place of meeting was a good half mile, but Mother Jones refused it.
Do you think I'm too old to walk?...The only trouble I have is a callous place on one foot.
At the Roosevelt Hotel was Ladislaus Makri, with a pair of holes through his overcoat, trousers and underwear, and these he exhibited to the visitors to whet their appetite for oratory, explaining that a bullet had grazed him as he was running across the swamp. With him was the brother-in-law of Carman Patty, who had just died, with five wounds in the abdomen. Patty's wife and four children are still in Hungary waiting for him to earn money enough to bring them to the Land of Hope.
[continues below]
[continued from above]
Roosevelt a Maze.
This was at Chrome, at the top of Woodbridge av. Along this so-called avenue are the several fertilizer factories which figure in the strike. There is no city named Roosevelt. It is a borough over which are scattered many two story frame houses, with broad stretches of marshy waste land between them, and now and then there rises the spire or bell tower of a church or a volunteer hook and ladder company.
With the exception of Woodbridge av., the artery of the borough, all the streets are muddy and unpaved, sometimes crossing a yellow creek filled with barrel hoops and tin cans, sometimes ending as they are blocked by laborers' cottages.
After being cut a dozen times by freight tracks with their "Lookout-Locomotive" signs, the main avenue passes the Liebig plant, the only one of the factories still attempting to keep its boilers heated. Above it is the Mayor's house. Opposite is a little building faced with brown brick which is called Borough Hall and is used as police station, Town Hall, council chamber, and everything else that is official. This is the headquarters of Chief Henry Harrington and his patrolmen, who have been so highly praised by the strikers for their conduct during the trouble.
Another mile lower, through the same type of dreary country, is the station of Carteret. Around it yesterday hung a crowd of men who had been thrown out of work, and here and there an ominous looking guard, who followed closely the movements of a stranger, thought to be a strike breaker.
Near by, on Leffert st., overlooking the Williams & Clark plant, where the clash occurred, is a little house in which lives Mrs. Haslam, with six of her seven children.
One American Victim.
Fred Haslam, the eldest of the family, who, with Beatrice, the eldest girl, is the only support of the household, was stretched out on an ironing board place between two chairs. He was the only American born among the toll of two dead and twenty wounded in the clash with the guards last Tuesday. Near him were his mother and his brothers and sisters-Victor, Viola, Joseph, Eunice and Beatrice.
They were debating whether Fred would have to go to the hospital. Dr. Reason had said it might be necessary, and the wound below his left knee had taken on an ugly look. It had grown black where the bullet entered, and the swelling had worked down into the foot.
[Said his mother:]
He's one that won't give in..but he looks to me like he'd lost twenty pounds since he's been in this. I didn't know he was in it on Tuesday. I looked out of the door when I heard the shooting, and I could see underneath the freight cars that men were running. I saw one man fall, shot, and I heard two bullets strike the house across the street.
[Fred interrupted:]
That wasn't me you saw fall mother...I was up here by the row of cottages, three hundred yards away. I ran across the marsh to get out of the way. Two bullets tore my coat before I got that far. Then I got this one in the knee.
I went right to Dr. Reason to get fixed up. It wasn't bad when I started but before I reached his office my leg was so stiff I could hardly walk. While I was there in came five more men that had got it the way I did.
It's getting worse now, and I can't be comfortable. But we can't do the right thing by it here with so many in a small room.
He looked around at the ceiling and walls. A long reach would have touched any of them. Up the street and down it were many more houses with large families in them, and each was built on the same plan as the Haslam home.
`
Protest on Guards.
With seventeen others wounded and two killed in their borough, the assemblymen of Roosevelt called a meeting yesterday of the most prominent of their citizens to protest against the return of the same guards to the Williams & Clark plant.
The main action taken was the appointment of a committee to collect funds for the poor in the borough and a committee to protest against the odors from the fertilizer factories. The first committee is composed of Emon Wilhelm, Overseer of the Poor; Valentine Gletner, painter and postmaster of Carteret; Joseph W. Crane, electrician and Street Cleaning Commissioner and Morris Koses, druggist.
The appointment of these committees was taken by the strikers to indicate that the sympathies of the leading residents were with them in their fight for better conditions.
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More from the same edition of the New York Tribune:
REARM STRIKE DEPUTIES AS VICTIM DIES
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Sheriff Sends 21 Guards
Accused of Manslaughter Back to Mill.
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STANDS BY MEN TILL PROVED GUILTY
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Two More Workers, Shot Down
by Tuesday's Volley, Dying in Hospital.
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PUBLIC FUNERAL FOR THE TWO DEAD
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Deaths Due to Revolver Bullets, Autopsy Shows-
18 Accused Give Fictitious Addresses
(From a Staff Correspondent of The Tribune.)
Elizabeth, N. J., Jan. 21.-With two dead and two dying as the result of the unprovoked attack of special deputy sheriffs upon the unarmed strikers of the American Agricultural Chemical Company's plants at Roosevelt on Tuesday, every effort of the authorities of Middlesex County to-day was directed toward obtaining evidence upon which to indict officials of the corporation as accessories to the shooting.
Indignation on the part of the local and state officials was intensified to-day when it was learned that the twenty-one deputies already arrested on the charge of manslaughter and held by County Judge Peter F. Daly, of New Brunswick, in $2,000 bail each to await action of the grand jury next week, had been returned to the plant of the Williams & Clark Company and rearmed as guards with the authorization of Sheriff Edward M. Houghton.
"This is simply an effort on the part of the Sheriff to justify his original action in swearing in these men as special deputies," said Chief Harrington of the Roosevelt police to-night. "Whatever necessity may have compelled their selection originally, their unfitness has certainly been demonstrated by the events of last Tuesday. Of course, the position of the company and of the sheriff is untenable unless they can demonstrate that these guards were needed to protect the plants from a lawless and desperate group of strikers.
"Previous events did not establish any such hypothesis, so that now, as a deliberate provocation to an outbreak on the part of the strikers, these men, who are already under a serious criminal charge, have been returned to bear arms in the midst of a community where their mere presence is an outrage to every natural feeling of the relatives and comrades of the victims of their murderous volleys."
Second Victim Dies.
The second fatality to follow the shooting was the death in the Alexian Brothers' Hospital in this city this afternoon of Carman Patty, of Chrome, who leaves a wife and four small children in Hungary.
An autopsy performed to-night revealed that death had been caused by peritonitis, resulting from a revolver bullet wound in one of the lower vertebrae of the spine.
Desideric Aleosandro, the first victim, was also shot by a 38-calibre revolver, despite the insistence of Sheriff Houghton and the company officials that the guards bore no arms other than comparatively harmless riot guns, which carried light charges and scattered buckshot at close range.
Sheriff Houghton, at the county jail in New Brunswick, this afternoon stated his side of the case to a reporter on The Tribune in the following statement:
The entire situation has been caused by the friction existing between Mayor Joseph A. Hermann of Roosevelt and the Sheriff of this county. When Hermann replied to the corporation that he was unable to afford adequate protection to the property of the company I was appealed to, and under my oath of office had to give the necessary assurances. Under the existing situation in this state the Sheriff has no large force of deputies at hand. He has no state police upon which to call for assistance.
I simply followed the usual procedure and appealed to a regular private detective agency, which is presumed to have on hand an experienced and cool headed body of disciplined men. I called upon Jerry O'Brien, of Newark, because I knew that he was a respected and responsible citizen. I had previously observed his efficient work in handling similar situations when I was under sheriff of this county.
Sheriff Stands by Deputies.
When asked why he had returned twenty-one arrested deputies to duty, Sheriff Houghton said:
I intend to stand by these deputies until it has been established that they are guilty of the crimes charged against them. I do not think that they have been rightly accused. I regard them as absolutely efficient and I consider that they have done their duty.
Sheriff Houghton expressed great surprise when informed that the two victims already dead had been slain with revolvers.
[He said:]
I can't understand that at all...I understood from Mr. O'Brien that the guards were to have been armed uniformly with riot guns. Such guns merely scatter buckshot, but are not intended to inflict fatal wounds.
Mayor Hermann, of Roosevelt, replied to Sheriff Houghton's attack to-night with the following comment:
It is all that we can do, with our small police force, to maintain order in the borough. Had I been the official empowered to enlist additional peace officers, I would have called upon citizens of the town, whom I knew and of whose good character I was convinced.
When asked what he thought of the action of the Sheriff in sending back to active duty the guards already under arrest for manslaughter, Mayor Hermann said:
I am not seeking any controversy with the Sheriff, but I must say that I consider the action as most ill advised. I didn't think that O'Brien would bring them back. I am certain that the sight of these men will tend to inflame the strikers. Together with the other borough officials, I am going to see what steps can be taken to have them permanently removed.
When the reporter for The Tribune visited the county seat at New Brunswick to-day Prosecutor W. Edwin Florance was quite incensed at the action of Sheriff Houghton in restoring to duty the arrested deputies.
[Said Mr. Florance:]
I can only say that he has assumed a most grave responsibility...if further violence should ensue, Sheriff Houghton, for whom I have the greatest esteem personally, will have been the architect of his own destiny.
When asked whether the renewed activities of County Detectives Ferguson and Pelletier in Roosevelt to-day indicated that the prosecution was preparing to bring criminal proceedings against the officials of the American Agricultural Chemical Company, Mr Florance said:
it would be manifestly improper for me, as a public official, to state what action I intend to take. I can only say that we are going to probe to the very bottom of this affair, and that no responsible culprit will be spared, whatever may be his position.
Eighteen Gave False Addresses.
A startling feature of the investigation to-day was the discovery that of the twenty-one deputies arrested as the result of the shooting on Tuesday all save three had given fictitious addresses. Although eighteen of the men claimed to be residents of Newark, only three were known at the addresses given by them in their bail bond applications.
John C. Moran claimed to live at 704 Willow av., Jersey City. This is a vacant lot. John Smith gave his home as 242 Montgomery st., Jersey City. This address is that of the Trinity Hedding Methodist Episcopal Church rectory.
The discovery of the eighteen fictitious addresses substantiated the statement made by Chief of Police Harrington that at the first inquiry, instituted by Prosecutor Florance, at the Williams & Clark plant Tuesday, most of the deputies gave their home addresses on the lower East Side of New York City.
When Jerry O'Brien, head of the private detective agency through which the deputies were obtained, motored from Newark to New Brunswick, late this afternoon, to confer with Sheriff Houghton, he was questioned concerning the fake addresses given by his men.
[Said O'Brien:]
Nothing to say...Absolutely nothing to say. I am not going to answer any questions or express any opinion. You will have to talk to the Sheriff.
At the Alexian Brothers Hospital last night it was said that Stephen Toth, who has more than fifty buckshot wounds in his body, and John Musika, who has a shot wound in his lower back, are both expected to die within the next forty-eight hours.
`
Strikers Plan Public Funeral.
To-night a committee of strikers was appointed for the purpose of arranging for a public funeral in Roosevelt Borough for Desiderio Alesondro and Carman Patty. The funeral will start from Van Ness Hall, in Chrome. The local officials are perturbed at the thought of the possible effect of the spectacle upon the 1,000 striking fertilizer workers.
This afternoon two indignation meetings were held in Roosevelt, one under the auspices of the strikers and the other by townspeople and borough officials.
Late to-night County Detective Pelletier and Chief of Police Harrington, with sixteen strikers, visited the plant of the Williams & Clark Company to identify the guards chiefly concerned in the shooting of Tuesday.
Some sixty deputies were lined up in one of the offices of the plant. Although the room was illuminate by only three flickering gas jets the strikers succeeded in identifying eight men, three of whom had not as yet been arrested. In addition, twelve of the sixteen strikers identified an employe of the company, who is not a guard, as having participated in the massacre. This man is said to have had a revolver, which he discharged repeatedly at the fleeing men.
So unsatisfactory were the conditions under which the identifications were made, however, that it was decided to repeat the test to-morrow by daylight . As the result of this investigation several additional arrests are expected to-morrow morning.
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BACK FROM STRIKE ZONE
Patrick Gill, an investigator of the United States Commission on Industrial Relations, turned in his report yesterday concerning the conditions which preceded the battle between strikers and deputies at Roosevelt, N. J., Tuesday.
James O'Connell, a member, of the commission, said yesterday afternoon that no decision had been reached on the shooting. The commission awaits more definite facts and details of the trouble.
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SOURCE & IMAGE
New York Tribune
(New York, New York)
-Jan 22, 1915
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/...
````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````The Spirit of Mother Jones - Andy Irvine
I see her marching down the street with her umbrella in her hand
I can hear her still at Ludlow where the miners made a stand
And she says: "John D. will you kindly tell to me
How could you let your troopers lay them thirteen children down?"
In the horrors of West Virginia and in Colorado too
Mother Jones and her miners they never could subdue
And the men they fought and died in their tents and shanty towns
And the women stood like a wall of steel that nothing could batter down
-Andy Irvine
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