Autobiography of Mother Jones

All about my house I could hear weeping and the cries of delirium. One by one, my four little children sickened and died. I washed their little bodies and got them ready for burial. My husband caught the fever and died. I sat alone through nights of grief. No one came to me. No one could. (1)

All about my house I could hear weeping and the cries of delirium. One by one, my four little children sickened and died. I washed their little bodies and got them ready for burial. My husband caught the fever and died. I sat alone through nights of grief. No one came to me. No one could. (1)

"You have to have religion to make a colony successful, and labor is not yet a religion with labor." (12)

"Now, boys, you are twelve in number. That was the number Christ had. I hope that among your twelve there will be no Judas, no one who will betray his fellows. The work you do is for your children and for the future. You preach the gospel of better food, better homes, a decent compensation for the wealth you produce. It is these things that make a great nation." (36)

Taking men into the union is just the kindergarten of their education, and every force is against their further education. Men who live up those lonely creeks have only the mine owners' Y.M.C.A.s, the mine owners' preachers and teachers, the mine owners' doctors and newspapers to look to for their ideas. So they don't get many. (25)

[In response to the Ludlow massacre] Rockefeller got busy. Writers were hired to write pamphlets which were sent broadcast to every editor in the country, bulletins. In these leaflets, it was shown how perfectly happy was the life of the miner until the agitators came; how joyous he was with the company's saloon, the company's pigsty for homes, the company's teachers and preachers and coroners. How the miners hated the state law of an eight-hour working day, begging to be allowed to work ten, twelve. How they hated the state law that they should have their own check weighman to see that they were not cheated at the tipple.

And all the while the mothers of the children who died in Ludlow were mourning their dead. (118)

Men's hearts are cold. They are indifferent. Not all the coal that is dug warms the world. It remains indifferent to the lives of those who risk their lives and health down in the blackness of the earth; who crawl through dark, choking crevices with only a bit of lamp on their caps to light their silent way; whose backs are bent with toil, whose very bones ache, whose happiness is sleep, and whose peace is death. (122)

[Workingmen] hated the coal and iron police of the mine owners and thought anything preferable to them. They forgot the coal and iron police could join the constabulary and they forgot the history of Ireland, whence the law came: Ireland, soaked with the blood of men and of women, shed the the brutal constabulary.

"No honorable man will join," said a labor leader to me when I spoke of my fears.

"Then that leaves the workers up against the bad men, the gunmen and thugs that do join," I answered. (33)

In the spring of 1903, I went to Kensington, Pennsylvania, where seventy-five thousand textile workers were on strike. Of this number at least ten thousand were little children. The workers were striking for more pay and shorter hours. Every day little children came into Union Headquarters, some with their hands off, some with the thumb missing, some with their fingers off at the knuckle. They were stooped little things, round shouldered and skinny. Many of them were not over ten years of age, although the state law prohibited their working before they were twelve years of age. (40)

Little girls and boys, barefooted, walked up and down between the endless rows of spindles, reaching thin little hands into the machinery to repair snapped threads. They crawled under machinery to oil it. They replaced spindles all day long, all day long: night through, night through. Tiny babies of six years old with faces of sixty did an eight-hour shift for ten cents a day. If they fell asleep, cold water was dashed in their faces, and the voice of the manager yelled above the ceaseless racket and whir of the machines.

Toddling chaps of four years old were brought to the mill to "help" the older sister or brother of ten years but their labor was not paid.

The machines, built in the north, were built low for the hands of little children.

Not far from Shamokin, in a little mountain town, the priest was holding a meeting when I went in. He was speaking in the church. I spoke in an open field. The priest told the men to go back and obey their masters and their reward would be in Heaven. He denounced the strikers as children of darkness. The miners left the church in a body and marched over to my meeting.

"Boys," I said, "this strike is called in order that you and your wives and your little ones may get a bit of Heaven before you die."
(51)

"Brothers," I said, "You English speaking miners of the northern fields promised your southern brothers, seventy percent of whom do not speak English, that you would support them to the end. Now you are asked to betray them, to make a separate settlement. You have a common enemy and it is your duty to fight to a finish. The enemy seeks to conquer by dividing your ranks, by making distinctions between North and South, between American and foreign. You are all miners, fighting a common cause, a common master. The iron heel feels the same to all flesh. Hunger and suffering and the cause of your children bind more closely than a common tongue.... I know no East or West, North or South when it comes to my class fighting the battle for justice...." (57)

I am not blind to the short comings of our own people. I am not unaware that leaders betray, and sell out, and play false. But this knowledge does not outweigh the fact that my class, the working class, is exploited, driven, fought back with the weapon of starvation, with guns and with venal courts whenever they strike for conditions more human, more civilized for their children, and for their children's children. (120)

"I would make the operators listen to the grievances of their workers. I would take the $650,000 spent for the militia during this strike and spend it on schools and playgrounds and libraries that West Virginia might have a more highly developed citizenry, physically and intellectually. You would then have fewer little children in the mines and factories; fewer later in jails and penitentiaries; fewer men and women submitting to conditions that are brutalizing and un-American." (100)

Is it any wonder that we have murders and holdups when the youth of the land is trained by the great industrialists to a belief in force; when they see that the possession of money puts one above the law. (66)

The moneyed interests and their servants, the officials of county and state, howl and yammer about law and order and American ideals in order to drown out the still, small voice of the worker asking for bread. (126)

The cost of living during the [First World] war went rocket high. Copper stock made men rich over night. But the miner, paying high prices for his food, his living, was unpatriotic if he called attention to his grievances.

I told the people after they had cheered me for ten minutes, that cheering was easy. That the side lines where it was safe, always cheered.

"The miners lost," I told them, "because they had only the constitution. The other side had bayonets. In the end, bayonets always win." (124)

As I look back over the long, long years, I see that in all movements for the bettering of men's lives, it is the pioneers who bear most of the suffering. When these movements become established, when they become popular, others reap the benefits. Thus is has been with the labor movement. (148)

"No matter what your fight," I said, "don't be ladylike! God almighty made women and the Rockefeller gang of thieves made the ladies." (125)

I am not a suffragist nor do I believe in 'careers' for women, especially a 'career' in factory and mill where most working women have their 'careers.' A great responsibility rests upon women--the training of the children. This is her most beautiful task. If men earned money enough, it would not be necessary for women to neglect their homes and their little ones to add to the family's income. (147)

"Prohibition came," said I, "through a combination of business men who wanted to get more out of their workers, together with a lot of preachers and a group of damn cats who threw fits when they saw a workingman buy a bottle of beer but saw no reason to bristle when they and their women and a little children suffered under the curse of low wages and crushing hours of toil.

"Prohibition," said I, "has taken away the workingman's beer, has closed the saloon which was his only club. The rich guzzle as they ever did. Prohibition is not for them. They have their clubs which are sacred and immune for interference. The only club the workingman has is the policeman's. He has that when he strikes." (148)

In spite of oppressors, in spite of false leaders, in spite of labor's own lack of understanding of its needs, the cause of the worker continues onward. Slowly his hours are shortened, giving him leisure to read and to think. Slowly his standard of living rises to include some of the good and beautiful things of the world. Slowly the cause of his children becomes the cause of all.His boy is taken from the breaker, his girl from the mill. Slowly those who create the wealth of the world are permitted to share it. The future is in labor's strong, rough hands. (149-150)