The most famous female labor activist of the nineteenth century, Mary Harris Jones—aka “Mother Jones”—was a self-proclaimed “hell-raiser” in the cause of economic justice. She was so strident that a US attorney once labeled her “the most dangerous woman in America.”

Born circa August 1, 1837 in County Cork, Ireland, Jones immigrated to Toronto, Canada, with her family at age five—prior to the potato famine with its waves of Irish immigrants.

She first worked as a teacher in a Michigan Catholic school, then as a seamstress in Chicago. She moved to Memphis for another teaching job, and in 1861 married George Jones, a member of the Iron Molders Union. They had four children in six years. In 1867, tragedy struck when her entire family died in a yellow fever epidemic; she dressed in black for the rest of her life.

Returning to Chicago, Jones resumed sewing but lost everything she owned in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. She found solace at Knights of Labor meetings, and in 1877, took up the cause of working people. Jones focused on the rising number of working poor during industrialization, especially as wages shrunk, hours increased, and workers had no insurance for unemployment, healthcare or old age.

Jones first displayed her oratorical and organizing abilities in Pittsburgh during the Great Railroad Strike of 1877. She took part in and led hundreds of strikes, including those that led to the Haymarket riot in Chicago in 1886. She paused briefly to publish The New Right in 1899 and a two-volume Letter of Love and Labor in 1900 and 1901. A beloved leader, the workers she organized nicknamed her “Mother Jones.”

Beginning in 1900, Jones focused on miners, organizing in the coal fields of West Virginia and Pennsylvania. For a few years, she was employed by the United Mine Workers, but left when the national leadership disavowed a wildcat strike in Colorado. After a decade in the West, Jones returned to West Virginia, where, after a violent strike in 1912-1913, she was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder. Public appeals on her behalf convinced the governor to commute her twenty-year sentence. Afterward she returned to Colorado and made a national crusade out of the tragic events during the Ludlow Massacre, even lobbying President Woodrow Wilson. Later, she participated in several industrial strikes on the East Coast between 1915 and 1919 and continued to organize miners well into her nineties.

Despite her radicalism, Jones did not support women’s suffrage, arguing that “you don’t need a vote to raise hell.” She pointed out that the women of Colorado had the vote and failed to use it to prevent the appalling conditions that led to labor violence. She also considered suffragists unwitting dupes of class warfare. Jones argued that suffragists were naïve women who unwittingly acted as duplicitous agents of class warfare.

Although Jones organized working class women, she held them in auxiliaries, maintaining that—except when the union called—a woman’s place was in the home. A reflection of her Catholic heritage, she believed that men should be paid well enough so that women could devote themselves to motherhood.

In 1925, she published her Autobiography of Mother Jones. She is buried in the Union Miners Cemetery in Mount Olive, Illinois.

"I'm not a humanitarian, I'm a hell-raiser."

Mother Jones

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  • SoylentSnake [he/him, they/them]
    ·
    5 months ago

    ah brother i'm real sorry :,( meow-hug

    wall of text

    are you sure it's a totally done deal? it sounds like this is based on her text patterns changing, which yeah could indicate what you're saying but could also be something innocuous. if it's just text patterns tbh, as scary as it is, i might try just directly communicating about it with her. ya'll have been friends for three years so i don't think it would be outta line to broach a "hey, i've sensed XYZ between us. sorry if ABC of my own shit has gotten in the way, i do genuinely feel romantic potential here so maybe we should keep exploring it at a pace that works for both of us" or idk some shit like that, idk how to do this stuff either lol. but so much of whether you'd work with someone long-term is hinged on how you communicate, i think trying to talk it out isn't a bad idea on those grounds assuming it wouldn't be a boundary issue. sucks though comrade, love and relationships are never purely easy.

    • Rojo27 [he/him]
      ·
      5 months ago
      spoiler

      Its more than the text patterns. Like we used to act like absolute fools. And we'd try and catch each other staring at each other. Now she barely looks in my direction and our interactions a bit drier. Yeah there's a joke here and there, but the vibes just aren't there.

      I want to talk to her, but now that she's on PTO I don't think its gonna happen. I can try and call her or send a voice text, but... IDK. Someone at work has told me she's also been talking with someone else, so who knows. I know people say she often "weighs her options", which is fine. I understood that going into this. Like even last year I know she also had been thinking of someone else when she asked me out because that's what she told the guy that was pushing her to go out with him. But she never really just cut someone off like this unless they really pushed her. But that's where it feels like things are headed.

      • SoylentSnake [he/him, they/them]
        ·
        5 months ago
        spoiler

        very strange...you'd think since you've been friends for so long she'd want to talk to you about it if something is up, rather than signal it with indirect shutting out behavior. in any case sorry that this seems to be the conclusion and she's handling it like this, maybe things will clarify themselves with time.