Published in Miners Magazine, January 24, 1907.
43
Welton Place, Chicago, Ill
January 12, 1907
Mrs.
Potter Palmer
100
Lake Shore Drive Chicago, Ill.
Chicago,
Illinois
Dear
Madam:
By the announcement of the daily press I
learn that you are to entertain a number of persons who are to be present as
representatives of two recognized classes of American citizens-the working
class and the capitalist class, and that the purpose of this gathering is to
choose a common ground on which the conflicting interests of these two classes
may be harmonized and the present strife between the organized forces of these
two classes may be brought to a peaceful and satisfactory end.
I credit you with perfect sincerity in
this matter, but being fully aware that your environment and whole life
has prevented you from seeing and understanding the true relationship of these
two classes in this republic and the nature of the conflict which you think can
be ended by such means as you are so prominently associated with, and with a
desire that you may see and understand it in all its grim reality, I
respectfully submit these few personal experiences for your kind consideration.
I am a workman's daughter, by occupation
a dress-maker and school teacher, and during this last twenty-five years an
active worker in the organized labor movement. During the past seventy years of
my life I have been subject to the authority of the capitalist class and for
the last thirty-five years I have been conscious of this fact. With the years'
personal experience - the roughest kind best of all teachers - I have learned
that there is an irrepressible conflict that will never end between the
working-class and the capitalist-class, until these two classes disappear and
the worker alone remains the producer and owner of the capital produced.
In this fight I wept at the grave of
nineteen workers shot on the highways of Latterman, Pennsylvania in 1897. In
the same place I marched with 5,000 women eighteen miles in the night seeking
bread for their children, and halted with the bayonets of the Coal and Iron
police who had orders to shoot to kill.
I was at Stanford Mountain, W.Va., in
1903 where seven of my brother workers were shot dead while asleep in their
little shanties by the same forces.
I was in Colorado at the bull pens in
which men, women and children were enclosed by the same forces, directed by
that instrument of the capitalist class recently promoted by President
Roosevelt, General Bell, who achieved some fame for his declaration that 'in
place of Habeas Corpus' he would give them 'Post Mortems.'
The same forces put me, an
inoffensive old woman, in jail in West Virginia in 1902. They dragged me out of
bed in Colorado in March, 1904, and marched me at the point of fixed bayonets
to the border line of Kansas in the night-time. The same force took me from the
streets of Price, Utah, in 1904, and put me in jail. They did this to me in my
old. age, though I have never violated the law of the land, never been tried by
a court on any charge but once, and that was for speaking to my fellow workers,
and then I was discharged by the federal court whose injunction I was charged
with violating.
The capitalist class, whose
representatives you will entertain, did this to me, and these other lawless
acts have and are being committed every hour by this same class all over this
land, and this they will continue to do till the working-class send their
representatives into the legislative halls of this nation and by law take away
the power of this capitalist class to rob and oppress the workers.
The workers are coming to understand
this and the intelligent part of that class while respecting you, understand
the uselessness of such conferences as will assemble in your mansion.
Permit me to quote from [Oliver]
Goldsmith's 'Deserted Village," where he says:
Ill fares the land, to hastning ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates and men decay.
Quite
appropriate to this fair land to-day.
Sincerely
yours, for justice,
Mother Jones
QUESTIONS
According
to Mother Jones, why was Mrs. Palmer's meeting misguided? o Why did Mrs.
Palmer's life and environment prevent her from under- standing class
relationships? o How did Mother Jones describe the relation- ship between
workers and capiwists? - What was the source of her belief? -P What remedy did
she propose? * Would meetings such as Mrs. Palmer's contribute to -;urb n