Friday's Labor Folklore 
Con Carbon, Minstrel of the Mine Patch
  
Honoring
Martin
Irons
(1827-1900)
 

*Immigrated from  Dundee, Scotland at age 14.

 

*After an apprenticeship in New York City he became a machinist. 

 

*In 1884 he was employed in a railway shop in Sedalia, Missouri.

 

*Joined the Knights of Labor and organized District Assembly 101 where he was elected as assembly chairman. 

 

*In 1886 Irons led a strike against the Union Pacific and Missouri railroads involving more than 200,000 workers.  These railroads were owned by Jay Gould, one of the most ruthless industrialists of the day.

 

*The strikers could not hold out and when the strike was crushed the demise of the Knights of Labor was hastened.  From out of the ashes rose the American Federation of Labor. 

 

*Strike leader Irons was blacklisted and was unable to hold a regular job.  He wandered around the Southwest, sometimes under an assumed name,  residing in St. Louis,  Little Rock

and Ft. Worth. 

 

*In 1894  Dr. G. B. Harris, an officer of the Social Democratic Party of Texas gave Irons - then age 67 -  

a home in the small town of Bruceville near Waco, Texas. 

 

*Martin Irons died there in 1900, broken-down and penniless, "a true and faithful Knight."

 
*In 1911 the Missouri Federation of Labor erected a monument at Irons' grave in the Bruceville Texas
Cemetery near Waco. 
 
Mother Jones
"Martin Irons had the heart of a child and the soul of a hero.  The capitalist class hounded him as if he had been a wild beast.  They deprived him of employment, they drove him from place to place until he was literally starved into a pauper's grave. "
 
Gene Debs
"All the powers of capitalism combined to crush him, and when at last he succumbed to overwhelming odds, he was hounded until he was ragged and footsore and the pangs of hunger gnawled at his vitals."    
 

 

 Union Fight Song

by

Elaine Purkey

 

Martin Irons

In him was reflected  

the spirit of revolt

 then manifest among the workers.

 (Texas Federation of Labor, 1906)

Prints and Photographs Online Catalog

Library of Congress

 

Knights of Labor

An injury to one is the concern of all.

 
Jay Gould (1836-1892)

Robber Baron

I can hire one-half of the working class

 to kill the other half.

 

Great Southwest Railroad Strike, 1886 

Sketch by G. J. Nebinger, East St. Louis, Ill.
    

 

   

It was difficult to find markers of important union struggles in the South.  An exception was the grave

of Martin Irons in Waco, Texas.

-- James Green in Taking History to Heart : the Power of the Past in Building Social Movements.

Photo: Prints and Photographs, Library of Congress

 

Martin Irons

(Oct. 7, 1827 - Nov. 17, 1900)

Leader

 Gould Southwest Railroad Strike 1886 Fearless Champion

of Industrial Freedom

Erected by the Missouri Federation

 of Labor and Affiliated Unions

Labor Day

Sept. 5, 1910

-- Inscription on Martin Irons Monument

 
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