Who was Mother Jones?
Mockingly derided as the “grandmother of all agitators” in the US Senate, Mother Jones (born Mary Harris Jones), remains one of the most famous activists and labor leaders in U.S. history.
Renowned as a voice of the working class, the barely five foot tall Irish emigre proved a force to be reckoned with, organizing against child labor, workers rights, and was one of the most recognized voices of dissent in the American political landscape.
However, her legacy has proven an enigma, as the same woman who publicly accused the United Mine Workers Union of selling out to the capitalist class, happily settled with John D. Rockefeller Jr. in the wake of the Ludlow massacre. The same woman who campaigned to bring women into the labor struggle was opposed to women’s suffrage insisting that a woman’s place was in the home.
In the end, Mother Jones’s contribution to the American Labor movement proved highly symbolic as she left her in her wake an image of a conservatively dressed grandmotherly woman unfazed by hostile employers, their hired gunmen or anti-labor politicians and intensified the struggle for workers rights.
Highly dismissive of women’s suffrage, Mother Jones insisted on prioritizing the liberation of the working class noting of the suffrage movement that “you don’t need to vote to raise hell!”
Extremely charismatic, Mother Jones was an exceedingly talented orator often using props, visual aids and other stunts to make her case. She often made her case by involving a personal tale where she in some way overcame one form of authority or another.
Mother Jones’s oratorical power was only matched by the signature “grandmotherly” persona that she developed as in her 60’s. At just over five feet tall, Mother Jones’s small stature cast a large shadow.
Having lost her four children and her husband to the 1867 yellow fever epidemic when it struck Memphis, the thirty-something former teacher turned dressmaker remained in obscurity for the next quarter of a century having suffered another calamitous misfortune having lost her tiny dress shop to the great Chicago fire of 1871.
By the time the 20th century arrived, Mary Harris Jones was an impoverished, aging widow as dispossessed of the American dream as any American could be.
Having survived plague famine and fire, Mother Jones had little left to do but to drift on into old age.
And then she became Mother Jones. Wearing out of date black dresses and referring to the many workers she aided as “her boys”, she did her best to exaggerate her age so as to fill the role of the old matriarch.
In lieu of her deceased children, she adopted the thousands if not hundreds of thousands of oppressed workers as her adopted children ironically using her role as a grandmother during a time when older women were not supposed to have opinions — or else to voice them publicly — in order to publicly impel her listeners into action.
Having no permanent address, she roamed the entire length of the U.S.
Subsidized by the United Mine Workers Union and to a lesser extent, the Socialist Party, roaming wherever she pleased helping whatever cause she pleased whether it be striking garment works in Chicago or bottle washers in Milwaukee breweries doing her best to fight not only for better pay, eight hour days and better safety for workers, she also fought against the yoke of company stores and company housing.
Although she lost many battles, Mother Jones got results.
During her tenure as one of the most famous and charismatic organizers of the United Mine Workers beginning in the 1890’s, the union saw an increase from 10,000 to 300,000 members whilst she organized their wives into “mop and broom” brigades encouraging women to fight alongside their husbands.
No mere rhetorical device, the moniker “Mother” alluded to the core of Mother Jones’s belief that working justice rested upon strong families which in turn relied upon decent working conditions.
At the heart of his message was her conviction that the working class must act together in order to overthrow the yoke of upper class oppression. The cornerstone of this message lay in need for the working class to participate in public affairs.
The family unit, Mother Jones argued, had the potential to hold the upper classes in check, hold the corrupt politicians who did their bidding to account and demand of the capitalist classes better wages.
However this goal could only be accomplished through the construction of democratic organizations of citizen-activists.
So what is Mother Jones’s great legacy in the 21st century?
The answer is complex as Mother Jones’s own agenda which was actually quite limited by her refusal to take women’s suffrage seriously instead arguing women should stay home rather than have their labor exploited.
Although Mother Jones campaigned for women to organize themselves in various trades, she ultimately believed that the voting booth was not in fact the best way to positively influence American policy, it was a distraction from the real impetus of positive change and worker justice — industrial unions.
Mother Jones’s ultimate strength was also her great weakness — perceiving the world through a class-based lens.
Although the U.S. was and in fact remains a class based society, her narrow focus precluded her from grasping all of the opportunities to be exploited for women and minorities beyond the realm of class.
Nonetheless, ninety years since she passed away, Mother Jones’s memory still evokes a vision that clearly still applies in the 21st century as the rich grow richer and the poor grow poorer.
