You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Tuesday March 23, 1915
Washington D. C. - President Wilson's Coal Commission Does Bidding of Coal Operators
From The Cincinnati Enquire of March 17, 1915:
Little Progress Is Made in Solving Strike Problem in Colorado,
Chief's Commission Reports
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SPECIAL DISPATCH TO THE ENQUIRER.
Washington, March 16-...[A] letter to the President from the President's Colorado Coal Commission , comprising Seth Low, Charles W. Mills and Patrick Gilday, Made Public to-day, indicates that small progress is being made there....
The Colorado Commission places stress upon the fact that its chief weapon is public opinion. It advises the President that a visit to Colorado at this time would be inopportune and proposes to avoid direct contact with the strike situation until next fall...
Seventy-one of the 132 operators in the Colorado field met the overtures of the commission coldly.
"From the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company," states the commission, "and from several of the smaller operators, your commission has received letters conceived in a very different spirit."
Conferred With Rockefeller.
The commission recently conferred with President Welborn, of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, and John D. Rockefeller, Jr., a Director. Their attitude, reports the commission, is "frankly to co-operate" and "to get into closer relations with their employees and to provide a means for the joint consideration of grievances, and for their correction." These interests, inclined toward co-operative adjustment, join with the 71 other operators, however, in advising against a visit of the Coal Commission to Colorado at this time.
"For all of these reasons we think a later visit to Colorado will be more useful than one made now," concludes the commission. "we have reason to believe that this opinion is shared in labor circles. Your commission, in reaching this decision, does not forget that it was appointed to do everything in its power to advance the welfare of the miner as well as of the operator. The commission indeed is profoundly convinced that the welfare of one is inextricably bound up with the welfare of the other. It is clear, however, that a commission without legal authority, and which therefore must depend for anything that it can accomplish either upon the willing co-operation of all parties or upon the force of public opinion must be so considerate in its approach to the subject as to disarm even prejudice, if that be possible. We are convinced that time will be a friendly element in bringing about the desired results."
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SOURCE
The Cincinnati Enquire
(Cincinnati, Ohio)
-Mar 17, 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/...
IMAGE
President Wilson's Colorado Coal Commission
(search: low gilday mills & choose p.13)
http://books.google.com/...
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"Believe me always, yours in the fight, Mother"
To Rockefeller Jr:
Trinidad, Colorado,
March 15", 1915.
Mr. John D. Rockefeller, Jr.,
5" Avenue & 54 Sts.,
New York City, N. Y.
My dear Mr. Rockefeller:
The sympathy of one whom thousands of men have called "Mother" is with you at this time when your heart is filled with sorrow for her who called you "Son". Grief brings us to a level, and the highest level, perhaps, that we shall reach here. For, in this hour, all hearts beat the same.
I am sure that you will understand, at this time, I voice the hope that you will pay the highest tribute to a mother's love by being all she prayed for you to be. The mothers of the race fix all standards of life. The mother love preserves it. He who justifies that love will find consultation for every sorrow of life.
I am sure that you will not resent these few words from one who has felt a mother's love for all boys and men, who has shared the sorrows of those in the ranks of toil, and finds in her heart the same sympathy for you, in this, your hour of greatest grief.
Mother Jones
306 German-American Trust Bldg.,
Denver, Colorado.
Mother and JDR Jr Shake Hands:
John D Rockefeller Jr shakes hands with Mother Jones,
New York Times, Jan 31, 1915
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From JDR Jr. to Mother Jones:
"Mother" Jones,
306 German-American Trust Bldg.,
Denver, Colo.
My dear Mrs. Jones:
I am deeply touched by your beautiful letter of sympathy with me in the death of my mother. Never did man have a purer, braver, nobler mother than mine. It is largely to her blessed influence that I owe whatever I am or may be. That I may be true to her teaching and worthy of her is my earnest prayer.
Her love and sympathy went out to all alike. She was no respecter of persons. To her all men were brothers She was deeply interested in my meeting with you. I gave her a full account of our pleasant conference, telling her of your fearless devotion to the cause to which you have given so many years of earnest work.
Again I thank you for your letter.
Very sincerely,
J. D. R., Jr.
Mother to James Lord, Head of A. F. of L.'s Mining Department:
Denver, Colorado,
March 23, 1915.
Mr. James Lord,
Ouray Bldg.,
Washington, D. C..
Dear Lord:
James Lord of the UMWA,
Head of A. F. of L. Mining Department
I have been wanting to write you for several weeks but you know how I am up against all the time and my feet have been troubling me for so long and I haven't had the time to go to a chiropodist. I am going to go to one this afternoon no matter if the sky falls. I was down in the Southern Coal fields and the poor fellows are in a horrible condition. There is hunger and suffering and misery on every side. Things are going all right though in the court. They are trying to get Zankenelli [Louis Zancanelli]. They have a jury impanelled. It is not everything we want but the best we can get out of the gang. I will go down again before I go away.
MacKenzie King is out here. He is coming to see me this afternoon at 2 o'clock. I had a party go and see him yesterday and had a long talk with him. I told this party to tell him to keep away from the Chamber of Commerce and other crook institutions if he expected to do anything for Mr. Rockefeller in this state. I have been working the game very quietly without letting any of them know what I was doing out here and I think we are going to clean house in this state. I am inclined to think a good many of the Rockefeller representatives will get their walking papers. He is digging into things here and I have got the right people going to see him, not out of the Labor Movement. I think before I get through we will be able to organize the southern coal fields.
I expect to go to Christopher, Ill. for the first of April and from there I am going to Chicago to get in touch with the hearing there [Commission on Industrial Relations]. As the open on the fifth of April.
From the Great Bend (KS) Tribune
of Mar 6, 1915
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None of the boys here have seen MacKenzie King, here. I am going to wait until I have my talk with him this afternoon. I sent young Rockefeller a letter of sympathy on the loss of his mother. I believe we should touch the human side everywhere we can. I spent last evening with a member of the Guggenheim firm. I got a very urgent invitation to spend the evening at their home. The fellow seemed to have no grasp of what they were doing in the southern coal fields.
Tell Brown that I am going to West Virginia. I am going to stop off at Charleston. I want to get a line on the situation there because if we don't straighten things out the I. W.'s are going to tear down all the work that we have done. I must try and straighten the matter out between Tom Haggerty and Boswell. Tom has got his head swelled a little bit since that pill peddler of a governor has been patting him on the back. He doesn't seem to realize that the fellow is using him. He went up New River and in his speech he made a statement that the Governor was his personal friend and he was the Governor's personal friend. Such statements are very suicidal to the cause of the workers and particularly to the miners. No man, if he wants to respect himself and save himself from condemnation and criticism can afford to make those statements. Governor Hatfield in my estimation is a political rattle snake and Haggerty has fallen into his tracks. Tom has no conception or grasp of the philosophy of class war. [Mother is here referring to a long and complicated controversy within the Socialist Party of America and within the United Mine Workers of West Virginia which grew out of the settlement of the Paint and Cabin Strike of 1912-13. As a result, Eugene Debs was also involved in a bitter exchange between Socialist comrades. Interesting that Mother does not mention the role of Debs in the affair.]
I sometimes think it would be a fortunate thing for us if we had some of the old fighters back from the grave. I don't know Lord, what the outcome of things are going to be, if we don't wake up to the fact that wer facing a crucial hour in the Labor Movement of this Country, but I have hopes we will be able to bridge the chasm successfully. If I can succeed in getting the Southern Fields organized I will be willing to go way back and watch the future. It means so much to the Labor Movement of the west. I want to have al long talk with you when I get to Washington. That will be the middle of next month. Give my regards to Frank Morrison, he is one of my old good boys.
The [Trinidad] Free Press is doing a lot of fine work in the Southern Fields. We got our candidate nominated at the primaries for mayor of the city of Trinidad. Northcutt and his cut throat sheet was all up in the air. This Mrs. Thomas* went out with another trollop from Ludlow to campaign for the C.F. and I candidate. They carried a bottle of whiskey into the homes of the men in order to bribe them to vote for the C.F. and I. I hope that the Labor Movement will learn one lesson from the past, particularly in Colorado, to make those women keep their place. It is a terrible tale that can be told of the blunders that can be told.
Well, Lord I will have to close. Give my love to Minnine when you write, and the same share to yourself and John. I am ready for fight. I can't keep still.
Believe me always, yours in the fight,
Mother
[Photographs and paragraph breaks added.]
*Note: If this is Mary Hannah Thomas, Ludlow Survivor, then I cannot say how she would come to be campaigning for a CF&I candidate. However, in her memoir, "
Those Damn Foreigners," Mary Thomas O'Neal certainly did seem to have succumbed to the charm-offensive of John D. Rockefeller Jr and his PR team.
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SOURCE
The Correspondence of Mother Jones
-ed by Edward M Steel
U of Pittsburgh Press, 1985
IMAGES
The Famous Hand-Shake
http://query.nytimes.com/...
James Lord
http://www.flickr.com/...
Mother Jones, 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/...
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Which Side Are You On-Billy Bragg
Well, I'm bound to follow my conscience
And I'll do whatever I can.
But it will take much more than a union law
To knock the fight out of a working man.
Which side are you on, boys,
Which side are you on
-Florence Reese & Billy Bragg
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