Mother Jones: The Most Dangerous Woman in America

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Mother Jones: The Most Dangerous Woman in America

3.91 of 5 stars 3.91 · rating details · 75 ratings · 13 reviews

Her rallying cry was famous: "Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living." A century ago, Mother Jones was a celebrated organizer and agitator, the very soul of the modern American labor movement. At coal strikes, steel strikes, railroad, textile, and brewery strikes, Mother Jones was always there, stirring the workers to action and enraging the powerful. In this...more

Paperback, 424 pages

Published April 15th 2002 by Hill and Wang (first published March 17th 2001)

more details... edit details

Get a copy:

More…

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

Best Biographies

260th out of 340 books — 939 voters

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka

Books About Old People

156th out of 206 books — 51 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

(showing 1-30 of 189)

filter | sort: default (?) | rating details

Jan 15, 2009 Arminius rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: history

Covering Mother Jones’s greatest crusades from rising up against child labor and demanding rights for coal miners shows what a brave women she was. She had the will and courage to march to the Whitehouse where President Theodore Roosevelt flatly refused to see her. The book also gives a telling history of the bleakness of big business and why labor unions became so popular in the early 20th century. The funny thing about her is that as a liberal reformer she opposed women’s suffrage.

1 like · like · see review

May 12, 2013 Deborah Méndez-wilson rated it 5 of 5 stars

I read Elliott Gorn's biography of Mary "Mother Jones" Harris because I grew up hearing my grandfather's stories about coal strikes, labor struggles, and the Ludlow Massacre in southern Colorado. My grandfather was born in Trinidad, Colo., and worked as a coal miner for years.

Mother Jones was a key figure during the Colorado Coalfield War, and it was important for me to read Gorn's book. Boy, am I glad I did. His book transported me back to the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20...more

like · see review

Jul 17, 2009 Gary rated it 5 of 5 stars

“Mother Jones is the most dangerous woman in America.”
- U.S. District Attorney, Reece Blizzard, 1902

When Mother Jones celebrated her (allegedly) 100th birthday on May 1, 1930, our nation rejoiced with her. Hundreds of telegrams arrived from statesmen, celebrities and politicians, including Eugene Debs, Clarence Darrow, Carl Sandburg and her old enemy, John D. Rockafeller. Many of her well-wishers, only a few years before, had endorsed efforts to silence or imprison her; but now, noting that th...more “Mother Jones is the most dangerous woman in America.”
- U.S. District Attorney, Reece Blizzard, 1902

When Mother Jones celebrated her (allegedly) 100th birthday on May 1, 1930, our nation rejoiced with her. Hundreds of telegrams arrived from statesmen, celebrities and politicians, including Eugene Debs, Clarence Darrow, Carl Sandburg and her old enemy, John D. Rockafeller. Many of her well-wishers, only a few years before, had endorsed efforts to silence or imprison her; but now, noting that the woman, who had been called “the walking wrath of God,” was in failing health, her enemies relented and became conciliatory. “Mother” greeted Union officials who arrived with a gigantic cake with one hundred candles. Even the New York Times (one of her most persistent critics), now cooed about her long life of valor and dedication. Yes, it appeared that the fierce old lady, who had once defied machine guns (armed only with a hat pin), had finally been “declawed, defanged and domesticated” – by time.

Author, Elliott Gorn presents the life of Mother Jones as two stories since in his view there are two people in this biography: Mary Jones and Mother Jones. Mary is a young woman who fled poverty and oppression in Ireland only to fall victim a cholera epidemic in Memphis (1867) in which she lost her husband and children; then came the Chicago fire (1871) in which she lost all her worldly goods. In the grim days following the fire, Mary has her first encounter with a union called the Knights of Labor and she volunteered to help them.

At this point, Mary was 34 years old, but poverty and hardship had aged her. When her fellow workers began to affectionately refer to her as “Mother,” she gradually realized that the term gave her authority. Bit by bit, she began to acquire qualities that drew others to her: maternal, loyal and dependable. She learned to stand
In saloons with “the boys,” matching them drink for drink.
She spoke their language and since she came from a similar background, she could speak of her experiences with arrogant land owners and greedy factory managers; when she realized that such stories struck a common chord with unemployed workers, she learned to embellish her tales for effect. And when she saw that her grey hairs
gave her power, she added almost a decade to her age.

In time, Mary Jones became Mother Jones, a fearless old lady who possessed both remarkable reserves of energy and a gift for oratory. When desperate workers, literally reduced to starvation, confronted the managers of factories, Mother Jones led the march. When the DuPonts,
the Armours and the Morgans rejected their demands for
8-hour work days and the abolishment of child labor, Mother Jones called them “bloodsuckers” and denounced them from hundreds of platforms. When the managers hired an armed militia that fired on unarmed strikers, Mother Jones rallied the workers and returned to confront management again. Eventually, she became the voice of abused workers everywhere and once led a “children’s march to the home of President Theodore Roosevelt where she camped outside his gates. Roosevelt, like a more recent president, refused to see her or respond to her appeal.

For better than forty years, this incredible woman marched through coalmines, factories and railroad yards, denouncing child labor, company stores, payment by script, and unsafe working conditions in West Virginia coal towns, Colorado mining camps and the railroad slums of Pennsylvania. On these occasions, she lived with the strikers, ate with them and walked with them to their jobs (or strike sites) each day. As time went on, her indifference to personal safety and her willingness to confront armed goons caused her to be labeled “the most dangerous woman in America.” Indeed, at times she seemed half in love with the possibility of martyrdom.

In retrospect Gorn notes that Mother Jones rarely won significant concessions. Time and time again, “her boys” were forced to return to jobs where they endured the same injustices. Gorn’s careful documentation demonstrates that in the early 20th century, the forces of industry had become so powerful, they virtually ran the country. Certainly, they elected presidents, owned the major newspapers, appointed judges and reduced state governors to status of puppets. Yet, there is little doubt that Mother Jones initiated change. Once such issues as child labor and unsafe working conditions were raised, they would not go away.

Gorn concludes that Mary Jones, the seamstress and teacher “invented” Mother Jones, a charismatic figure that spoke for millions. He concludes that she was sometimes fallible and used her position to criticize anything that displeased her, including suffragettes, ministers (“sky pilots”) and the Salvation Army. At times, she gave rants that were filled with egotistical bombast, and she often played fast and loose with “the facts.”

On the advent of her 100th birthday, it is quite likely that Mother Jones was actually a mere 92. Perhaps a woman named Mary Jones was trapped inside “the most dangerous woman in America;” if so, Mary relished every moment of it. In the final analysis, whatever her shortcomings, Mother Jones captured the hearts and improved the lives of millions – workers who called themselves “Mother Jones’ children.”
(less)

1 like · like · see review

Jan 04, 2010 Emily added it

Shelves: read-in-2010

The life of turn-of-the-century labor organizer and hell-raiser Mary Harris "Mother" Jones makes for an unusual biography. For one thing, there's almost no documentation on Jones's life until after her sixtieth birthday - an age when many biographies are beginning to wind down, and those on rock stars and Romantic poets have already ended. Jones herself, in her autobiography, devoted only four pages to the first forty years of her life; she continuously sought to downplay the period before she j...more The life of turn-of-the-century labor organizer and hell-raiser Mary Harris "Mother" Jones makes for an unusual biography. For one thing, there's almost no documentation on Jones's life until after her sixtieth birthday - an age when many biographies are beginning to wind down, and those on rock stars and Romantic poets have already ended. Jones herself, in her autobiography, devoted only four pages to the first forty years of her life; she continuously sought to downplay the period before she jettisoned her role as a teacher and dressmaker to become "Mother" Jones. For another thing, in the documentation that does exist, fact needs to be teased apart from fiction - and fiction, in turn, must be analyzed to extract the larger metaphorical truth it contains. Mary Jones was a consummate storyteller and a skilled propagandist, and her self-made "Mother Jones" persona was one of her primary tools in her own political campaigns. As Elliott Gorn explains in the introduction to his biography Mother Jones: The Most Dangerous Woman in America, she crafted her public image carefully and completely, often using embellished or fabricated anecdotes to communicate a larger point:

Her fame began when, toward the end of the nineteenth century, she transformed herself from Mary Jones into Mother Jones. Her new persona was a complex one, infused with overtones of Christian martyrdom and with the suffering of Mother Mary. Perhaps it is best to think of Mother Jones as a character performed by Mary Jones. She exaggerated her age, wore old-fashioned black dresses, and alluded often to her impending demise. By 1900, she had stopped referring to herself as Mary altogether and signed all of her letters "Mother." Soon laborers, union officials, even Presidents of the United States addressed her that way, and they became her "boys."

The persona of Mother Jones freed Mary Jones. Most American women in the early twentieth century were expected to lead quiet, homebound lives for their families; few women found their way onto the public stage. Ironically, by making herself into the symbolic mother of the downtrodden, Mary Jones was able to go where she pleased and speak out on any issue that moved her. She defied social conventions and shattered the limits that confined her by embracing the very role that restricted most women.

This is a fantastic biography. Gorn does a thoughtful, thorough job of addressing Jones's doubleness, and analyzing many of the questions she never wanted to address. How was her political work affected by the heart-wrenching death of her husband and four young children from yellow fever in 1867? What were the atmospheres of famine-era Cork and mid-19th-century Toronto like, and what might Jones have observed there to influence her later outlook? What factors may have caused her militantly anti-middle-class stance, or her tendency to pick fights with her colleagues? On top of these, though, Gorn paints a vivid portrait of the character of Mother Jones - the foul-mouthed, white-haired Irish-American matron who braved armed mine guards, Presidents of the United States, jail cells, hundred-mile marches, and decades of nomadic existence in order to help working-class Americans win such innovations as the weekend, the ten-hour day, and the right to negotiate with owners of capital.

Gorn's tone throughout is respectful, even admiring, but he never seeks to make his subject into a saint. He explores Jones's flaws along with her strengths, details her failures as well as her successes, and calls out her bull whenever he sees it. In the process, he gives a fascinating glimpse into an important period of American labor history, in which unionism was becoming steadily more mainstream. Within Mother Jones's lifetime the labor movement moved away from a radical critique of the capitalist system, and toward a model in which the laborers were merely guaranteed a certain piece of the capitalist pie. Jones's herself believed that workers had a moral right to the products of their own hands; she was a revolutionary, which made the country's trajectory frustrating to her, and caused her to become alienated late in life from many of her former allies. But she was also pragmatic. Never one to hold out for the perfect revolutionary outcome, she understood the value of compromises and took them whenever she felt they would improve quality of life for striking workers.

For a revolutionary and a self-described female hell-raiser, Jones also had some surprisingly conservative philosophies. To me, the most fascinating analysis in Gorn's book has to do with her opposition to female suffrage and other feminist causes such as access to birth control and, amazingly, even the right of women to join unions. At first glance contradictory - how could a woman living such an unusual life be for limiting other womens' options? - her stance makes some sense once Gorn has contextualized it. The entire "Mother Jones" persona was heavily invested in the family model; Jones's idea of an equitable society was one in which women didn't have to work, because their husbands would earn enough to support them and enable them to stay home and raise children. While it ignores the "exceptions to the rule" - those women who don't marry, for example, who are widowed like Jones herself, or who find personal satisfaction in joining the workforce but who would prefer to join it on equal terms with men - Jones's position has a certain logic. The vast majority of examples she saw of women and children working for money, were cases of dire financial necessity. Most working-class women in turn-of-the-century US cities, Jones argued, would have preferred to devote themselves to their "natural" role as full-time caregivers, but couldn't afford to do so because of a system that cheated working-class men out of a living wage.

Likewise, the birth control campaigns of people like Margaret Sanger seemed to Jones dangerous machinations of the capitalist class: convincing women that they should have fewer children would take the onus off the employers and put it instead on the shoulders of working-class women, who would in turn be blamed for struggling to feed large families they had "chosen" to have. Women were naturally maternal, according to Jones, and far from being suppressed, this motherliness should be celebrated. Enacting legislation that encouraged women to be "more like men": voting, joining unions, having fewer children, and so on - would undermine the family model that was a strength of the working class and the source of Mother Jones's own moral authority, and ultimately create a justification for lower pay (since a two-income household has twice as much money coming in, and capitalists would use this to argue that each worker should earn less). Jones also felt that voting was largely meaningless, and that female suffrage would pacify the workers without actually improving their lives or according them more agency.

Reading about Jones's take on the early feminist movement really brought home to me my own middle-class origins. Jones wouldn't have liked me, and despite my admiration for her courage, sharp tongue, and organizing genius, I probably wouldn't have liked her much in person either. Her dismissal of women outside the married-with-children mold is hard for me to stomach (especially as spinsters and widows have traditionally been among the most marginalized groups). On the other hand, Gorn enabled me to grasp Jones's perspective in a truly valuable way. In reading about her initial opposition to child-labor restrictions, for example, I was reminded that sending a son or daughter out to work at thirteen or fourteen was widely accepted at the time, and often made the difference between sufficiency and hunger for working-class families. The push for child-labor restrictions began in the middle class, and the arguments for them were often purely sentimental. Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "The Cry of the Children" and other maudlin poems, for example, circulated in drawing rooms and galvanized committee ladies. Although Mother Jones was certainly not above an assault on the heartstrings herself, she was fundamentally a big-picture pragmatist; I can understand how she would find the well-meaning dilettantism of wealthy women offensive. And it's a sobering fact that this divisiveness still plagues the feminist movement today, with the perspectives of working-class women and women of color often getting excluded from the feminist agenda (leading, in turn, to the rise of Womanism and similar movements). As a middle-class white woman, that's something I could stand to be reminded of more often.

There are so many fascinating angles explored in this book; I couldn't begin to touch on all of them. But I do recommend Mother Jones for an excellent foray into turn-of-the-century labor history and a portrait of one flawed but astounding person within that movement. (less)

like · see review

Apr 03, 2012 Valerie rated it 5 of 5 stars

Very good history of Mother Jones, this cuts through the romanticism and shows her for who she really is, a fiery dedicated woman who organized and led gutsy strikes and demonstrations, often putting her own life in danger to fight for the rights of the working poor. She is a worthy hero whose work needs to be emulated by activists all over the world.

1 like · like · see review

Feb 08, 2009 Trey Shiver added it

Shelves: biography, non-fiction, political

A bio of Mother Jones, the turn-of-the-century union organizer. She worked mostly with miners. A fiery speaker and a heroine for the underclasses, she was in her 70s when Teddy Roosevelt famously called her "the most dangerous woman in America."

like · see review

Apr 05, 2013 Ashley Scherman rated it 3 of 5 stars

Was pleasantly surprised to find a great tale of the industrial revolution in the US and the birth of unions, although there really isn't enough information on Mother Jones for a book this large, so sometimes it's repetitive.

like · see review

Sep 10, 2009 Maureen Flatley rated it 5 of 5 stars

The godmother of American activism, Mother Jones was living proof that anyone can make a difference.

1 like · like · see review

Feb 06, 2010 Scott Ford rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: biography, american-history

A personality to be reckoned with. One person shakes the world.

like · see review

Jul 29, 2010 Zachary rated it 5 of 5 stars

Excellent bio of one of my heros.

1 like · like · see review

Dec 05, 2007 Grace rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: history buffs, biography fans

Shelves: 2007

This is another good read, though not as quick. It busts up a lot of the myths about Mother Jones that those of us who are fairly romantic and non-critical in our idealization of labor history (me) might be guilty of, which still giving Mother Jones credit for everything she did. Gorn is a good historian, the book is very well researched, and if you can get past his critical eye (which took me some time to re-adapt to, as I haven't read any "real" history in quite a while), the book is really in...more

1 like · like · see review

Jul 21, 2007 Patrick rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: americanhistory, business-history

A good biography on a key labor leader who deserves to be better remembered for her full history. Amazing how little Gorn was able to find on Mother Jones's early history.

like · see review

Jul 16, 2011 Libby rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: americana

Great subject matter, simplistic narrative. Why'd MJ hate on women's suffrage?

like · see review

Mar 22, 2011 Lucy Muller rated it 3 of 5 stars

It is taking me a long time to get through this.

like · see review

May 17, 2013 Wickstrom marked it as to-read

May 03, 2013 Stephanie Betthauser rated it 4 of 5 stars

May 02, 2013 Shannon Carlock marked it as to-read

Apr 22, 2013 Kasane Teto marked it as to-read

Apr 15, 2013 Jambolaya marked it as to-read

May 07, 2013 Yvette rated it 4 of 5 stars

Mar 27, 2013 Timothy marked it as to-read

Mar 25, 2013 Anne marked it as to-read

Mar 21, 2013 Dan Schindel marked it as to-read

Mar 16, 2013 Sindhu marked it as to-read

Mar 15, 2013 Maureen :) marked it as to-read

Mar 14, 2013 Farley marked it as to-read

Mar 07, 2013 Hope E marked it as to-read

Mar 09, 2013 Anne Lopatto rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction-read

Mar 06, 2013 Scott rated it 5 of 5 stars

Mar 04, 2013 Carrie marked it as to-read

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

topics	posts	views	last activity
Mother Jones: The Most Dangerous Woman in America	1	5	Jul 14, 2009 08:43pm

combine
Other Editions (1)

Genres

Biography

9 users

History

5 users

Non Fiction

4 users

History > American History

2 users

Labor

2 users

See top shelves...

Books by Elliott J. Gorn

The McGuffey Readers: Selections from the 1879 Edition

More…

Share This Book

Facebook Twitter Your website

Trivia About Mother Jones: The...

No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »

title link	preview: Mother Jones: The Most Dangerous Woman in America
avg rating	preview: Mother Jones: The Most Dangerous Woman in America Goodreads rating: 3.91 (75 ratings)
small image	preview: click here [close]
med image	preview: click here [close]
BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/797448.Mother_Jones?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1312034595l/797448.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/797448.Mother_Jones?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Mother Jones: The Most Dangerous Woman in America by Elliott J. Gorn[/url]

Mother Jones: The Most Dangerous Woman in America

Friend Reviews

Lists with This Book

Community Reviews

new topicDiscuss This Book

combineOther Editions (1)

Genres

Books by Elliott J. Gorn

Share This Book

Share This Book on Your Website

Trivia About Mother Jones: The...

new topic
Discuss This Book

combine
Other Editions (1)