Mother Jones Monument
Introduction
Text-to-speech Audio
Images
The restored Mother Jones Monument in 2015.
Mother Jones brought crowds to all of her meetings with the miners.
Mother Jones outside her prison in Pratt West Virginia during her court-martial in 1913
Mother Jones brought thousands to mourn the death of the nations “most well-known woman.”
A postcard of the Mother Jones Monument from the 1940s
Backstory and Context
Text-to-speech Audio
An Irish-born
American schoolteacher and dressmaker, Mary G. Harris Jones, also known as Mother
Jones, was a valiant fighter for workers’ rights. Mother Jones, born in Cork, Ireland
in 1837 emigrated to Canada to eventually the Unites States of America earning
wages by teaching and sewing. Jones then moved to Memphis and married a union
worker by the name of George Jones. George Jones was an iron molder that was
left behind in the city with his wife and family after the yellow fever stuck and
the rich fled. Mary Jones witnessed her family perish, and one by one she
watched her four children and husband fall ill and die in these, penniless times. Jones then
moved to Chicago where she would sew for the rich, until that seized due to the
Great Fire of 1871 making her homeless and without a job.
Jones
then arose into labor and socialist movements with the sole purpose being to
contest against these injustices. The late 1800s through the 1920s, Jones was a
major role in strikes and labor injustices movements. Newspaper articles were calling
her the “most well-known woman” in the United States. The United Mines Workers
began a strike for living wages in the coal fields, and Jones was a respected piece
of the union. Jones argued and debated that we should organize at the community
level to demonstrate workers capacity for controlling their destiny. Jones also
believed that unskilled workers, immigrants, and African Americans should be
the focus of the new labor movement. One of Jones’ most well-known
contributions was building workers’ commitment to unionism and bridging racial
and ethnic divisions where she argued that the Black miners of West Virginia
were the best trade unionists.
Jones worked with various ethnic groups who were
committed to building a strong enough union to succeed in their quest for labor
rights. According to the Mother Jones Museum, when an African-American woman,
impressed with Mother Jones commitment to the cause, suggested she would kiss
Jones’ skirt hem in gratitude for her contributions, Jones refused: “Not in the
dust, sister, to me, but here on my breast, heart to heart.” Jones had a
reputation of no matter where she may go she enters the lives of the lowest and
becomes a part of them.
Jones brought a new style
of unionism in the Pennsylvania coal fields that amplified women and children’s
involvement in her push. When she went to West Virginia in 1900, West Virginia
coal companies had been observing her and the UMWA’s success in Pennsylvania
and Illinois and other Midwestern states. Justus Collins, the current mine
owner, developed an approach that combined legal restraints with armed mercenaries
against her and the miners. Jones
encouraged non-violent civil disobedience through mass action whenever she
found possible, however, this was not one of those times. When she violated an
injunction in 1902 in West Virginia, refusing to be silenced and continued
to speak out for justice, a prosecuting attorney arrested her, and Judge
Jackson renewed an injunction originally issued in 1897. The prosecuting
attorney calling her the “most dangerous woman in America” during the
proceedings.
Her time in West Virginia
did not end there, Mother Jones attempted to stop the miners from rushing into
Mingo County in late August 1921. Mother Jones also visited the governor and left
assured he would intervene before the right started. Jones opposed the march
and rejoined the miners on the front lines and told them to go home. She
claimed to have had a telegram from President Warren Harding offered
to end the private police in West Virginia if the miners were to just return
home. When UMW president Frank Keeney demanded to see the telegram,
Mother Jones refused, and he criticized her for lying to them. Mother Jones not
only refused to allow anyone to read the document, the President's secretary
denied ever having sent one. After she fled the camp, Jones suffered a nervous
breakdown.
The Mother
Jones Monument was placed in Mt Olive, Illinois by the PMA as, “both a reflection of the origins of
industrial unionism in the U.S. and an argument that, following in Mother Jones
footsteps that ordinary men and women should play a role in the nation’s
economic destiny.” Even today, economic inequality
has caused an interest in her life. In 2012, Mother Jones was honored
with the Cork Mother Jones Festival, and in 2015 the Mother Jones Monument
site was re-dedicated, and the story of Mother Jones remains in Mt Olive,
Illinois.
Sources
Mother Jones Biography. The Biography.com website. April 02, 2014. Accessed September 30, 2018. https://www.biography.com/people/mother-jones-9357488.
Barga, Michael Barga. Mary Harris ‘Mother’ Jones (1837-1930): Labor Activist and Organizer, Speaker, Teacher. Jones, Mary Harris ‘Mother’. March 05, 2018. Accessed September 30, 2018. https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/organizations/labor/jones-mary-harris-mother/.