[page 13]
mather jones with the miners children.
One of the most forceful and picturesque fighters in American Jabour was Mary Harris Jones, who from the 1870's until her death in 1930 at age 100 became known as Mother Jones. Born in 1830 in Cork, she moved with her family to Toronto, where she was educated in normal schools, and for a short time became a teacher in Monroe, Michigan. She soon gave this up and became a seamstress, for, as she said, "Sewing is better than bossing little children". By 1861 she had married, moved to Memphis, and was in the process of bearing four children. Her husband, a staunch member of the Iron Moulders' Union, imbued her with much of the union consciousness that was to direct her life -and the bosses did the rest. In 1867, her entire family died in an epidemic of yellow fever, and "before the deaths cart carried them away" she had obtained a permit and was nursing the other sick in Memphis who were not rich enough to have moved away to avoid the plague. "This I did until the plague was stamped out". Again eking out a living as a seamstress, she spent the years from 1867 to the 1870's in Chicago, attending meetings of the Knights of Labour and organizing with them. As the Knights were still meeting in secret, little is known of her precise activities, but in 1877 she was well enough known in labour circles to have been called by striking railroad workers in Pittsburgh to come to their aid. During the strike, the owners, in order to turn public opinion against the strikers, set fire to more than 100 of their own railroad cars, Government troops were called out. In one night of fiery flames and steel bayonets many workers died, and Mother Jones later recalled, *I learned then and there that labour must bear the cross for others' sins and must be the vicarious sufferer for the sins of others."
Women and the Vote Her lack of involvement with the feminist movement of her own time flowed from her union consciousness and her own brand of socialism. Her view that: "you don't need a vote to raise hell" tumed many feminists away from her. At one meeting in New York in 1913, where she chided feminists for thinking the vote would bring "Kingdom-come", they accused her of being "anti." to which she replied, "I'm not anti anything which will bring freedom to my class. The women of Colarado have had the vote for two generations, and working mer and women are still in slavery." She said another time, "orga, ized labour should organize its women along industrial lines. The plutocrats have organised their women, and keep them busy with suffrage and prohibition and charity". Our present struggle is testimony to the correctness of her views, for the vote did little to ensure women workers the dignity and equality on the job, or in society generally, for which they must now fight.
Non-violent Tactics This experience impressed upon her the need for workers? organisations and discipline among the workers-a discipline which imposed education and reason over violence as a tactic in winning labour struggles. Her advocacy of non-violent pressure became characteristic of her tactics in later struggles, and was certainly molded by her experience in Pittsburgh and the Haymarket Massacre of 1886. In addition to this she recognised the importance of mobilising community support for workers* struggles. For example in a Miner's strike lasting many months, in Arnot Pennsylvania, she not only organised an army of women to keep scabs away from the mines, but also went into the surrounding countryside and held meetings among the farmers and won them to the side of the strike."
The primary organising tactic she perfected was highlighted by marching women with brooms and pans as a challenge to scabs and encouragement to join the union. One of the most famous of these marches occured in Pennsylvania in 1900, where in the Hazelton district more than 150,000 miners were on strike. In one town where she was forced to speak in an open field as the priest was speaking in church, calling miners "children of darkness"
and exhorting them to obey their masters and take their reward in heaven," she responded, "Boys, this strike is called in order that you and your wives and your little ones may get a bit of heaven before you die." The strike vote was unanimous. Here she learned of a camp 15 miles away across the mountains called Coaldale, where Government troops were blocking the area to keep organisers out and prevent the strike from spreading. She went to the women of the area, asking them to help her, and proposed that they marched to Coaldale to spread the word. Three tousand women marched the 15 miles with their brooms and pans, the last mile taking more than 2 hours as they moved through the Government troops, In the morning when the miners woke, they were greeted by the women banging their pans and yelling, "Join the Union, Join the Union". _ More than 5,000 joined that day, and, according to Mother Jones, When there was nothing left to organise we marched back across the mountain singing.
Her broom brigade was used again successfully in Colorado, near the scene of the Ludlow massacre, where hundreds of miners and their families had been murdered by Rockerfeller nightraiders. Scabs had been brought in, guarded by Government troops, to protect the Rockerfeller mines and break the strike. Again she organised the women, who marched to the mine entrace with their brooms, chasing the scabs away, sometimes with a tap or two from the blunt end of the broom. In 1910 in Greensburg. Pa., her entire broom brigade was arrested for disturbing the peace. Upon the advice of Mother Jones, the women went to jail, taking their babies with them, and day and night sang songs amid the wailing of the babies. The complaints of sleeplessness were so numerous among the townspeople that the Sherriff was finally forced to implore the judge to release all the women. Maimed Children Her fight for better working conditions for children was well known, and she appeared before many investigating committees, bringing the maimed children with her as evidence of her plight. Her march tactic was employed in this arena again in PennsyIvania in 1903. In a strike in the Kensington district among millworkers, of more than 75,000 strikers 10,000 were children. When equiring at the local paper why the working conditions of the children were not being publicised, she was told that the mill-owners had stock in the newspaper. "Well I have stock in these children," she said; and "borrowing" them from their parents, she gathered a band to march for ten days as far as Hoboken, raising money for the strikers and calling attention
[page 14]
to the inadequacy of child labour protection. This march was successful in amending Pennsylvania work laws for children from 12 to 14.