"I'm a Bolshevist from the Bottom of My Feet to the Top of My Head," Mother Jones, 1919

From the New York Times, October 24, 1919, and the Chicago Tribune, October 24, 1919 [The following represents excerpts from the speech as reported in both newspapers].

"So this is Gary," said Mother Jones, who was cheered for five minutes.

"Well, we're going to change the name and we're going to take over the steel works and we're going to run them for Uncle Sam. It's the damned gang of robbers and their political thieves that will start the American revolution and it won't stop until every last one of them is gone.

"We are to see whether Pennsylvania, whether Indiana, whether Illinois belong to Kaiser Gary or Uncle Sam. If Gary's got it, we are going to take it away from him and give it back to Uncle Sam. When we are ready we can scare and starve and lick the whole gang.

"I'll be 90 years old the first of May, but by God if I have to, I'll take ninety guns and shoot hell out of 'em. For every scab on the mills there is a woman that reared him. Women, the destiny of the workingman is in your hands. Clear hell of every damned scab you can lay hold on. We'll hang the bloodhounds to the telegraph poles. Go out and picket."

Mother Jones then lectured the soldiers on guard in the hall. "You went abroad to clean up the Kaiser," she said, "and the bones of 60,000 of your buddies lie bleaching on the battlefields of France. My God, ain't you men enough to come over and help us get the Kaisers at home? We'll have an army as big as yours and you'll be with us and we'll lick hell out of 'em. We'll give Gary, Morgan, and the gang of bloodsuckers a free pass to Hell or Heaven.

"Our Kaisers sit up and smoke seventy-five cent cigars and have lackeys with knee pants bring them champagne while you starve, while you grow old at forty, stoking their furnaces. You pull in your belts while they banquet. They have stomachs two miles long and two miles wide and you fill them. Our Kaisers have stomachs of steel and hearts of steel and tears of steel for the 'poor Belgians.'

"If Gary wants to work twelve hours a day let him go in the blooming mills and work. What we want is a little leisure, time for music, playgrounds, a decent home, books, and the things that make this life worth while.

"Steel stock has gone up. Steel profits are enormous. Steel dividends are making men rich over night. The war--your war--has made the steel lords richer than the emperors of old Rome. And their profits are not from steel alone but from your bodies with their innumerable burns; their profits are your early old age, your swollen feet, your wearied muscles. You go without warm winter clothes that Gary and his gang may go to Florida to warm their blood. You puddle steel twelve hours a day! Your children play in the muck of mud pubbles while the children of the Forty Thieves take the French and dancing lessons and have their fingernails manicured!

"God Almighty never made a man that could stop a woman from talking," she continued. "You can arrest me, but I'll be free. I can raise more hell in jail than out. If Bolshevist is what I understand it to be, then I'm a Bolshevist from the bottom of my feet to the top of my head. All the world's history never produced a more brutal and savage time than this, and Mr. Soldier, I'm ready to prove my statement that we've got to change or this nation will perish. This is the centruy of the worker.

"All throught human history man has been toiling and dreaming to this day. Christ was the world's greatest agitator, but I defy any one to tell me Christianity reigns. A lot of hypocrites are trying to hypnotize us to get down on our knees to the robbers. For Christ's sake be men and women."