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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Yeah, to a degree, but it's consistent enough for the Buck Rogers space opera storytelling norms. The stormtrooper's grim skeleton costumes tell us they're the big bad's elite mooks. Mooks in 70s and 80s movies were never expected to actually hit the heroes when shooting. It was consistent with contemporary genre conventions. It became a joke after years and years of people watching and re-watching the stories but I sincerely doubt many people were thinking about when they sat down to watch the movies in the 70s and 80s. As of Star Wars we'd only seen a few Tuskens trying to kill Luke with a club. Obi-Wan was trying to impress on a 19 year old farm boy from Wichita that they were going in to a rough, dangerous port city full of guys with scars, peg legs, and tattoos of anchors and hearts with "mom" written on them. It works within the context of that self-contained story. When you try to take it out of that Buck Rogers context, when you forget that it's a space opera and not a "real world", that's when it starts being a problem that the Stormtroopers can't shoot straight and die instantly when someone blasts them.
Like, the first time we're introduced to the storm troopers is on during the boarding scene on the Tantive IV. The massive, massive Star Destroyer overruns and captures the little corvette. We then see the interior of the ship with the crew racing around to prepare a defense while sirens go off. The breaching scene is super-tense with all these middle aged crewman basically wearing office casual, and they're clearly worried. And then the door explodes and we get our first glimpse of these skull-faced marines in gleaming white armor and blasters start blowing chunks out of the walls and people start dying. That's our introduction to Storm Troopers! They blast their way in to the ship, push in despite losses, and overwhelm these poor saps. Then Darth Vader, seven damn feet tall, walks in over the corpses of his own men and lifts a grown man off the ground with one hand! Our first glimpse of the Empire is ruthless armored soldiers and their armored dread commander towering over normal people! So when Obi-Wan says "For too precise for sand people" folks are thinking about the Stormtroopers they saw wrecking the Tantive IV a few minutes ago. When we look at it it's been 50 years of jokes about how Stormtroopers can't shoot straight, but for the audience in 1979 it was all very fresh and new and the perspective was very different. Once people got out of the theater, maybe after watching it two or three times, yeah they probably started joking about how stormtroopers can't hit anything, but that was very much the norm for action movies of the time.
When what's his ass and Ponda Baba confront Luke in the bar, Luke's just this fresh faced kid, and this grizzled man gets up in his face and starts picking a fight. And this guy isn't a small time crook. He's not wanted for petty theft by the local cops, he's wanted in twelve star systems!. And then we see Obi-Wan's laser sword in action and he cuts someone's arm right off, right there are the bar! And meanwhile Han guns some crook down over an unpaid debt and no one cares! This is a rough bar! Mostly when someone gets stabbed to death or shot in a bar, people run! But no one cares here. It's just another day in Mos Eisley.
Narritively this is really important. We learn a whole lot about the characters. Luke is totally out of his league and has no idea how to handle himself. He needs Obi-Wan to protect him. Han's a cool customer. He can kill a man then go right to business negotiations.
This is where we start to learn what a Jedi Knight is. Obi-Wan can influence people's minds with a few words. When Luke is being bullied Obi-Wan, an grey haired old man, is totally cool and trying to deescalate. But when Ponda Boba's blaster comes out we see that the laser sword is powerful and deadly. Obi-Wan cuts a man's arm off in one motion, easily, and without even becoming flustered. Obi-Wan is dangerous and has strange powers. Han is a dangerous, hardened killer who can keep his cool in the worst circumstances. We learn that Han and Obi-Wan can function, and even thrive, in this "Wretched hive of scum and villainy".
It all supports the story and helps us learn important things about the character to set up what comes after.
Like i just pulled it up right now. We get these close ups of the Tantive IV crew so we can see that they're mature men with grey hair, grey eyebrows, and they're scared. When the door blows they all cringe away. And then these armored skeletons come through, lasers blasting. One goes down immediately, they're not indestructible, but then they start slaughtering the crew! And, of course, they can barely walk straight because the cheap styrene costumes are cutting in to their groin and the extras can barely see out of the helmets! But from there it's just a slaughter. We see Tantive crewmen running and dying, and the fighting is over in a few minutes with the survivors surrendering and being marched off as prisoners. God, and Vader really is an entire head taller than any of the Storm Troopers, I love it. He's holding the captain with his feet an entire foot off the ground! Prowse's physical acting sells it, Jone's voice acting is great. I really love this movie.
Also Leia is action girl AF. Right from her first scene she's never a cringing damsel in distress. The first time we see her she stone cold kills a man, shooting him right in the heart from close range! God Carrie looks so tiny compared to all these armored soldiers, with Prowse looming over them all. And the costumes area so cheap, they look like shit! I love it. : )
Plus, the way Vader's become flanderized over the decades. Officers aren't afraid to speak harshly or contradict him, and he confidently tells them he can handle the situation. He's clearly in charge, but he's not, idk, a meme I guess, the stupid-evil Vader who just kills people all the time for no reason because that's the only part people remember from Empire.
Well, I've clearly gone far off topic, so I'm going to stop and just watch Star Wars now. Cheers!