Mother Jones

Summary

Podcast Summary: The History Chicks – “Mother Jones”

Date: January 15, 2026
Hosts: Becca & Susan
Episode Theme: The extraordinary life and radical legacy of Mother Jones (Mary Harris Jones), labor organizer, fearless activist, and enduring icon of the working class.

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Overview

This episode explores the life, leadership, and legend of Mary Harris “Mother” Jones—celebrated for her relentless advocacy for labor rights, her electrifying organizing among miners and children, and her evolution from Irish famine immigrant to one of the most influential figures in American social movements. Through richly detailed storytelling, pop-culture tangents, and critical reflection, Becca and Susan reveal why Jones was called “the most dangerous woman in America” and how her legacy reverberates today.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Early Life: Irish Famine, Immigration, and Loss

• Birth & Family: Mary Harris was born in Cork, Ireland (likely July 1837) into poverty and social upheaval. She later obscured her age and background, muddying the historical record ([02:42–09:05]).
• The Irish Famine: The hosts discuss the devastation of the famine, its root causes (crop failure, British policy, food exportation despite starvation), and the family’s desperation ([04:22–05:43]).
• Kindred Spirits: The Choctaw Nation, recently displaced by the U.S., sent relief funds to famine-stricken Ireland—a symbol of international solidarity commemorated in Ireland ([05:45–06:59]).
• Emigration to North America: Her father emigrated to find work, eventually sending for the family to join him in Toronto in 1853. The Harris family found modest improvement, prioritizing education for their children ([09:05–12:07]).

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2. Formative Years: Education, Work, and the Deprivation of Tragedy

• Teaching & Dressmaking: Mary trained at Toronto’s Normal School (Teachers College), worked as a teacher in Michigan, and then as a dressmaker in Chicago ([12:07–15:20]).
• Marriage and Family: Married George Jones, a union iron molder in Memphis—a key influence on her understanding of collective bargaining ([16:03–17:46]).
• Devastation by Disease: The 1867 yellow fever epidemic swept away her husband and all four children. Mother Jones survived and began habitually wearing black ([22:37–26:30]).

“I sat alone through nights of grief. No one came to me. No one could.” – Mary Jones ([23:07])

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3. Resilience and Reinvention: The Road to Radicalism

• Back to Chicago: She resumed dressmaking, starkly aware of the contrast between the opulent wealthy and the starving poor ([27:30–28:26]).
• Catastrophe & Upheaval: The 1871 Chicago Fire destroyed her shop and home; the subsequent economic depression further radicalized her ([28:45–33:44]).
• The Labor Movement’s Birth: She witnessed and possibly participated in the era’s major labor strikes: the Great Upheaval, Haymarket Affair, and Pullman Strike, as the fight for the 8-hour day catalyzed a national movement ([33:44–38:29]).

“I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there, and he said he’d stolen a pair of shoes. I told him, ‘If you’d only stolen a railroad, you could be a United States senator.’” – Mother Jones ([37:35])

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4. Transformation Into ‘Mother Jones’: Strategy & Persona

• Organizer & Orator: She moved from town to town organizing miners for the United Mine Workers (UMW). Known for converting hostile crowds through passionate speeches ([38:29–39:18]).
• Motherly Iconography: Jones rebranded herself as an older, maternal figure—adopting black dresses, a hat, and silver hair—as a strategic tool to be both underestimated and embraced ([44:39–46:48]).

“No matter what your fight, don’t be ladylike.” – Mother Jones ([39:18]) “I have no address but where my shoes have taken me. I abide where there is a fight against wrong.” – Mother Jones ([39:18])

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5. Tactics & Controversies

• Mop and Bucket Brigades: Excelled at organizing miners’ wives and children; led creative and confrontational actions to support strikes ([39:52–41:26]).
• Food Foraging & Solidarity: Organized supply lines for striking families, demonstrating women’s critical role in the labor struggle ([41:26–43:03]).
• Skepticism Toward Suffrage: Jones criticized the exclusion of working-class and Black women from the suffrage movement, favoring direct action over the vote ([42:13–43:28]).

“I don’t need to vote. What I need is action.” – Paraphrased ([42:16])

• Flaws: The hosts candidly address Jones’s active opposition to Chinese workers and support for exclusionary laws—racist stances shared across labor at the time but critical to acknowledge ([47:07–49:22]).

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6. The Children’s Crusade: Advocacy Against Child Labor

• Confronting Child Exploitation: Jones campaigned fiercely against the use of child labor in mines and mills, seeing it as both a humanitarian and class issue ([52:14–54:17]).
• The March to Oyster Bay (1903): She famously led hundreds of child laborers and supporters from Philadelphia to New York, hoping to present their grievances to President Theodore Roosevelt. Though turned away, the march drew national attention ([66:50–71:50]).

“I’m going to show Wall Street the flesh and blood from which it squeezes its wealth.” – Mother Jones ([69:00]) “We want to go to school and not to the mills.” – Children’s parade sign ([66:33])

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7. Clashes with Power: Arrest, Jail, and ‘Most Dangerous Woman’

• Arrest and Courtroom Defiance: Jones was arrested and jailed multiple times for inciting strikes. In a 1902 trial, a district attorney called her “the most dangerous woman in America,” marveling at her ability to sway entire communities ([62:33–62:58]).
• Fearless in the Face of Power:

“Whatever I have done in West Virginia, I’ve done all over the United States—and when I get out, I will do it again.” – Mother Jones, in court ([78:29])

• Advocating Before Congress: Her activism led to Senate investigations and policy shifts, even if her personal efforts didn’t always yield immediate results ([78:48–80:09]).

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8. Principles and Beliefs

• Solidarity > Division: She consistently challenged efforts to divide workers by nationality, skill, or race—though not always perfectly practiced ([63:37–64:35]).

“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.” – Mother Jones ([63:37])

• On Agitation and Reform: She embraced the role of agitator:

“Get it straight. I’m not a humanitarian. I’m a hellraiser.” – Mother Jones ([63:27]) “I hope to live long enough to be the great grandmother of all agitators.” – Mother Jones ([81:40])

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9. Later Years & Legacy

• Relentless Commitment: She continued traveling, speaking, and organizing into her 80s, only withdrawing after 1924 ([85:59–86:27]).
• Controversies: The hosts recount her unpopular attempt to discourage the violent Battle of Blair Mountain in 1921 ([83:21–85:17]).
• Autobiography: Dictated late in life, it is colorful but unreliable as factual record; best read as parable and philosophy ([86:27–87:59]).
• Self-Branded Longevity: She celebrated her “100th” birthday (though likely 93) on May 1—International Workers Day—a conscious self-mythologizing act ([88:19–93:11]).

“I long to see the day when labor has the destiny of the nation in her own hands… show the world what the workers can do.” – Speech at 100th birthday ([88:45])

• Death and Memorial: Died November 30, 1930. Buried in Mount Olive, Illinois, the symbolic home of “her boys,” with a grand monument. Her legacy is commemorated on Miners Day and with honors such as the National Women’s Hall of Fame and Mother Jones magazine ([93:51–98:01]).

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10. Recommended Resources & Pop Culture

• Books:
  • The Autobiography of Mother Jones (available online; read with caution)
  • Mother Jones: The Most Dangerous Woman in America by Elliot Gorn
  • Mother Jones: Raising Cain and Consciousness by Simon Cordery
  • Children’s books: Mother Jones and Her Army of Mill Children by Jonah Winter & Nancy Carpenter
• Documentary: A Fight Like Hell: The Testimony of Mother Jones (2023, Vimeo)
• Mother Jones Magazine: Still publishing award-winning investigative journalism.
• New Art: Statue to be unveiled in Chicago in 2026 ([99:13–103:57])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Labor Solidarity:
  • “Labor must bear the cross for others’ sins, must be the vicarious sufferer for the wrongs that others do.” – Mother Jones ([37:16])
• On Her Public Persona:
  • “She comes into a state where peace and prosperity reign, crooks her little finger, and 20,000 otherwise contented men lay down their tools and just walk out.” – 1902 West Virginia attorney ([62:58])
• On the Power of Women:
  • “She respected the power of women to enact change.” ([41:26])
• On Her Focus:
  • “I’m not an anti anything which brings freedom to my class. That would be the working class.” ([65:04])

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Important Timestamps

• 00:07 – 30-second summary and context
• 04:22 – The Irish famine and its impact
• 22:37 – Family loss in the yellow fever epidemic
• 28:45 – Chicago Fire and its consequences
• 33:44 – Haymarket Affair and labor organizing
• 38:29 – Becoming “Mother” Jones
• 52:14 – Focus on child labor; the Children’s Crusade plans
• 62:33 – “Most dangerous woman in America” trial
• 66:50 – Children’s March to Oyster Bay
• 78:29 – Jailed for labor organizing
• 85:17 – The Battle of Blair Mountain and disputed decisions
• 88:45 – “100th birthday” speech, legacy
• 93:51 – Burial and monument
• 98:01 – The enduring legacy and Mother Jones magazine

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Final Reflection

Susan encapsulates:

“Mother Jones proved that one single relentless voice, armed with purpose, strategic fury, and above all, stamina, can shake the foundations of society. Her legacy: the idea that dignity is not negotiable, that people are not disposable, that solidarity is a weapon. … She turned ordinary workers into a force capable of confronting the most entrenched power in the country.” ([107:12])

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Episode Takeaways

• Mother Jones’ story is about transformation through grief, finding purpose in activism, and challenging power with unyielding resolve.
• Her impact on labor, children’s rights, and organizing strategies remains foundational.
• Her persona, tactics, and contradictions spark complex reflection on American radicalism and the intersectionality (and limitations) of 19th–20th century social movements.

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[For more, check the History Chicks’ website and the Mother Jones Museum.]

Transcript

[Becca]

Welcome to the History tricks where any resemblance to a boring old history lesson is purely coincidental.

[Susan]

And here's your 30 second summary. Mother Jones lived one of the most dramatic second acts in American history. Her early life was shaped by poverty, immigration and repeated personal tragedies. And she reinvented herself in middle age as a warrior for justice. She was a fearless labor organizer, an electrifying speaker who rallied coal miners, steel workers, railroad shopmen and especially exploited children to stand up for their rights. She once earned the label the most dangerous woman in America for standing firm against powerful corporate and government pressures. Her work can still be felt in the labor protections, organizing strategies and economic justice movements around the world. The end let's talk about Mother Jones.

[Becca]

But first let's drop her into history. In 1903, construction began on New York City's Grand Central Terminal, a building designed to replace Grand Central Station, which was rapidly becoming unusable due to increased population and railroad technology. This structure would take 10 years to complete. The very first Tour de France bicycle race was held. The Imperial Library in India was open to the public 45 years and an independence from British rule. The name was changed to the National Library of India, the largest in the country. The Wright brothers filed for a patent on a flying machine. It was denied and they had to hire a patent attorney to fine tune the application. Meanwhile, the brothers made the first free, controlled and sustained flight flight on their machine. That same year. The patent finally arrived three years later. Marie Curie received the first of her two Nobel Prizes. Emmeline Pankhurst founded the Women's Social and Political Union in Britain with a goal of women's suffrage through quote deeds, not works. Politician Claire Luce Booth, inventor of the Toll House cookie Ruth Wakefield, aviatrix Amy Johnson, actress Claudette Colbert and fashion icon Diane Vreeland were all bor. The first female doctor to practice in Canada, Dr. Emily Stone and frontier woman and teller of tall tales Calamity Jane both died. And in 1903, a woman named Mother Jones led a march of children on a three week moving demonstration to help abolish child labor.

[Susan]

Mary Harris was born in Cork, Ireland, the second child of the five living children of Richard Harris and Ellen Cotter Harris. Historians and frankly us are uncertain about her exact date of birth because later Mary herself would alter her age and move her birth date. More on that later. There was a lot of muddying of the waters by Mary about her younger life. But we do know because we have the document that she was baptized on August 1, 1837. And in the Catholic tradition, baptism follows relatively soon after BIR, so we're looking at possibly a July 1837 birthday. We do know that Mary's younger brother William, became a famous Catholic priest later in his life. She had another brother, older, who may have had a different mother, and two sisters named Catherine and Ellen, who were significantly younger than she was. In Ireland, the vast majority of people toiled on the land for a small number of aristocratic, largely, but not completely Protestant, British landlords for very low wages. The desperation of the poor was routinely ignored. When you couldn't pay your rent, you were booted out. The needy were cast aside to starve. Rebellions that sprung up were put down violently. All of these circumstances were crystallized into turbulence by the onset of a potato blight and what became known as the Irish Potato Famine, which lasted for seven.

[Becca]

Interestingly to me is that infestation didn't come from Ireland or Europe. It came from North America on a shipment. And what it did was just kill the potato plant, quickly turning the tuber into mush, basically, and it just spread rapidly throughout Europe. Unfortunately, Ireland relied heavily on potato farming as a crop. Their people relied on it as a main food product, too. And everything was controlled by the British. So exports of other things that were growing in Ireland were still going out. There is a good chance that there was enough food in Ireland being produced to feed the Irish people, but it was being exported out.

[Susan]

There is an episode of the miniseries Victoria where the Parliament is actually talking about the troubles in Ireland, the potato famine and what should be done. And the callousness of. With which the Tory Party deals with the very real trauma of the Irish people bears watching, I think. And rather than give you the wrong episode number, I am going to look it up and put it in the show notes. But the prevailing. The prevailing idea seems to be like, who cares? It's better if there's less of them anyway. Yeah, I'm not joking.

[Becca]

No, I know you're not.

[Susan]

I would like to also go down a tiny bit of a rabbit hole. You know, we just covered Sarah Rector, who was a Creek freed woman who became rich. The oil fields go. Listen to it. There's a circle back to other people that were affected by the Trail of Tears during the Potato famine. The Choctaw Nation, who had just finished being decimated by the Trail of Tears, removing them from their homelands into a new land, felt so sorry for the Irish people and were so empathetic that despite their own enormous poverty and their uphill battle to basically rebuild their society, they collected around $6,500 in modern money and sent it to Irish relief efforts to support the people of Ireland. Such was their fellow feeling. And even now, the Irish people never forgot that kindness. There is a Kindred Spirits feather sculpture in Middleton, Ireland, honoring the Choctaw people. And also anyone who has Choctaw status can apply for a full scholarship to Irish universities even now.

[Becca]

Okay, that's really cool.

[Susan]

Yep.

[Becca]

Now, because of all this turmoil, we know very little about Mary's parents. They were most likely illiterate. He was most likely some type of a laborer. We know that she grew up, for the most part, and a very poor section of Cork. And maybe he was about 30 when they got married. Maybe mama was about 20. But there's no records. You know, there's. We can just do math later and fill in holes.

[Susan]

Right, right.

[Becca]

I mean, in that time, though, a fire in a church could wipe out whole generations of records. That wasn't unusual.

[Susan]

And her memory of what years, things happened. I mean, you can't rely on anything in her autobiography, really, other than parables, I would say. Let's regard her autobiography in that regard. She says that he left them in 1835, which would mean that she does not exist or is not a child of her father. So the records seem to indicate that Papa left Ireland sometime between. Her youngest brother was born in 1846 with the oldest brother and went to the United States, where he was going to get work and save up money to send for the rest of his family. Think about the terror of that, where your only breadwinner and, frankly, protector goes to another country far away with a vague hope that someday they'll be able to bring you to a safer place. And Mary was never very clear about how her mother supported them in Ireland during the years her father had to work to get passage together for the family, she really obscured a lot of her childhood. There are some tales that she puts forward about how her father had to flee from prosecution after having been an agitator. We can take these sort of with a grain of salt. They do fit in with her later picture of herself.

[Becca]

Yeah.

[Susan]

But there doesn't seem to be much documentation. All we really do know is, at least economically, he really was forced to leave, along with a staggering percentage of his countrymen, and flee to North America in search of a better life.

[Becca]

In those five years of that potato blight, the Great hunger is what it's called in Ireland. One and a half million Irish people died of starvation or related illness, but almost twice as Many left the country, and Richard and Richard Jr. Were two of them.

[Susan]

So in North America, Papa got a job first digging canals and then got a much better job with a railroad. And he was still working with the railroad, but in Toronto, Ontario, when he had enough money and resources for the family to join him in 1853. You know what? I'm going to have to say a lot more years like 1853 than we usually do, because the way she obscured her age and the confusion it would cause with regard to mathematics. Yeah, we think maybe saying the years most of the time are going to be the best way to go. However, she was probably around 10 when she came to Canada. Her father was a U.S. citizen, and she seems to be also under his umbrella, although they lived in Canada for all of her childhood.

[Becca]

I always think it's interesting to follow the flow, like how, you know, he comes into New York, you know, all these people, where do they go? And not all of them stay in the cities and the eastern seaboard. These people went up to Vermont, and then from Vermont, it's a super easy hop over to Canada. I don't know. I think that's interesting. It's just like a visual in my head of people, all these masses of people coming in and then spreading out across the United States. But that's the path that they took.

[Susan]

I always used to think that when I was leaving a, like a football game or whatever in high school, how interesting it would be. And of course, I didn't know about drones when I was in high school. And now you can just do it. But like how interesting it would be to see from a helicopter at night, all the people leave in a red clump of tail lights. And then how it just disperses.

[Becca]

Right. Or even out of the stands. It's. You're packed in there and you're just shuffling out and then suddenly, you know, flow dynamics kicks in and, you know, you can have room to walk.

[Susan]

Yeah.

[Becca]

In Toronto, they lived in a rented house. It was about 600 square feet. They rented it for about $4 a month, which seemed like a lot to me. And according to censuses, they had two other children, Mary and Isabella Dunlop, that also lived with them. So that makes nine people in a 600 square foot house. But they had enough room that they could have cows and pigs and a food garden and they could sell milk products. So they were doing already, you know, just coming over. They're already doing better than they were doing in Ireland.

[Susan]

Oh, thousand percent better. Plus they had agency, you know, they could improve their situation.

[Becca]

One of the ways that they did just that, they sent their kids to school. Mama and Papa were probably illiterate, but they wanted their children to get an education. The younger children attended a Catholic school. And it seems as though Mary attended public schools in programs that were designed to assimilate immigrants into Canadian society. So that's what she's focusing on.

[Susan]

So she graduated from the public school system, and it might be that she just went to elementary school, to Catholic school, to eighth grade. That's as far as they go. And if there wasn't a Catholic high school, your only option if you're going to go forward, is a public school. But after graduation, she attended the Toronto Normal School or Teachers College. And I always loved that name. I used to live on Normal street when I went to college. That was the street the Teachers College used to be on. It was really fun to put on the flyers for parties, though it comes from a term in French, Ecole Normale, meaning model school. That's all.

[Becca]

I don't know where we can put this, and if I should just put it here. One of the probable tall tales that she told later, but I just loved it so much, was that in her youth, she credited her later life to organizing girls to march to their fathers and brothers employers to demand pay that they had earned and not received.

[Susan]

I. I'm not going to slander old Richard, Papa Richard with this, but there is a book I read by Maeve Benji, I want to say, where the little kids were sent to the employer to pick up the paycheck before Papa drank it.

[Becca]

Interesting. Yes. It could have been something that simple. And then in her, her spin, it was this whole march of little girls.

[Susan]

Well, the Normal School was tuition free, which was good because I don't think the family could have afforded to send her even they paid an allowance to each student of a dollar a week. You know, for every time you passed the week, you got another dollar. Mary did not quite graduate from the Toronto Normal School, but she underwent enough training to pass her certificate and take a teaching position at a convent in Monroe, Michigan at the age of 23. And it's gotta be one of those, like the nuns know a friend that needed a teacher.

[Becca]

Yeah. I think her priest up in Toronto recommended her for this particular position. And look at a map. You know, Toronto to Michigan isn't as far as it might sound.

[Susan]

Right.

[Becca]

And this school, it was an elementary school up to age 12, and it was for both boys and girls.

[Susan]

She was paid $8 a month, which is about 300 plus room and board. But the school she described later as a, quote, depressing place to be. She felt confined. And she said later, they taught me some things in the convent they did not have in mind. Among the details of my education, there were a hatred for injustice and vast inquisitiveness. I think she has some harbored resentment against the nuns of this convent.

[Becca]

Yeah, but she wasn't about to go back home. She, at this age, she's in her early 20s, considers herself on her own. She's independent. So she heads a little farther south to Chicago. In her youth, she had picked up quite a bit of dressmaking skills, which made me wonder if that was one of the things her mother did right. I know that they taught that in her school, her. Her earlier education, but I can't imagine that she would have learned enough to become a dressmaker, which is what she did in Chicago.

[Susan]

And maybe it was tougher to run a business, you know, than she thought. She got an. Of a school position in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1860, which seems like an. Let's call it an unpropitious time to be moving to the south in the United States, as they are on the eve of war. So I don't know. Did the dressmaking not work out? You know, did she fall back on teaching? We don't know. She didn't write about that part.

[Becca]

I imagine it would've been very difficult for her to break into the business at the level that she would want to, you know, to support herself. Well, and maybe she just saw it, I guess, to go somewhere else, you know, a smaller place. Let's go south to Memphis.

[Susan]

Right.

[Becca]

The crack of the Civil War.

[Susan]

So in Memphis, she met and married a man named George e. Jones. And Mr. George, I mean, it's hard for us to tell as we are not workers of metal. Unless there's something I don't know about you.

[Becca]

No, no, no.

[Susan]

And I've seen forged in fire, you know, I could do none of that. It seems very dangerous and skilled, all of it. But George held a rather highly valued, extremely skilled position in iron workery, which is probably not a real word. He also was an organizer of his local branch of the National Union of Iron Molders, which later became. I mean, there's like so many names of unions. It later became the International Molders and Foundry Workers Union of North America. Functionally, both of those represented workers whose specialization was building steam engines, building mills, repairing and building wrought iron fencing and furniture. He himself was a staunch unionist, and his wife Mary was educated over the dinner table about the power of collective bargaining, a way to address the mismatched power between labor and owners. Now, Mary had seen somewhat in her childhood in the peasantry versus landlord situation she'd grown up in in Ireland. Right. You know, yes, the person that built the enterprise had the right to benefit from their hard work, But George and the union, and ultimately Mary's position was more of the profit should be shared with those who actually produce the wealth. There shouldn't be a boot on the neck of the laborer while plutocrats swim in a pool of gold coins. That is a Scrooge McDuck reference.

[Becca]

I appreciated it. Thank you.

[Susan]

And maybe I can find. Do I say jif or gif? I don't know. Maybe I can find a little, tiny video about that.

[Becca]

I'm definitely Team gif. Like, if you just put a T at the end of it, it would be a gift.

[Susan]

But it's giraffe, and that's gi. Giraffe.

[Becca]

Like I said, I am firmly on team gif.

[Susan]

Well, Memphis went through some things at the beginning of the Civil War. Initially, they were held under martial law, but then the Union had a hold of it by 1862, the same year that Mary and George had their first child, a daughter named Catherine.

[Becca]

Memphis was such a valuable port on the Mississippi river. And of course, you know, they were in the south, so they began as a confederacy, but it was one of the first places that the Union took over in the south, and they held it for the entirety of the war. So it wasn't like Mary was seeing a lot of things that you would have saw, you know, a lot of battles in her backyard, I guess, is what I'm trying to say.

[Susan]

So over the course of the next four years, Mary and George had three more children, one right after the other. So we have Catherine, and then there's Elizabeth, and then Terrence, and then, inevitably, Mary. It almost surprises me. They never had a George, which makes me think maybe they did have a George who didn't make it.

[Becca]

Oh, maybe. That's a. Certainly statistically probable. Yeah, well, statistically highly probable, for sure.

[Susan]

Right.

[Becca]

And during the war, George's factory was quite busy. You know, they were helping to fix trains, and trains were a major form of transportation during the Civil War. So he had work. I mean, as far as being in the middle of a war, this wasn't a bad way to go through it.

[Susan]

That same year, the year that Tiny Mary was born, unfortunately, with the war over, Mary and George and their entire social class was facing Competition for what people are calling unskilled labor. But you and I know it's skilled labor from the sudden appearance of freed enslaved people. And I'm sorry to say that there ensued a series of race riots, largely Irish immigrants and workers versus freedmen, which is just the tip of the iceberg because from on out the KKK would begin their infamous operations against people of color all over the former Confederacy, which we have talked about in many a subject, most thoroughly, I would say, in our Ida B. Wells episodes. And let me tell you something that will percolate through all of Mary's labor work, whatever the personal feelings of the individual toward freedmen, toward people of color in general unions, as a class, we're more focused on protecting the members of the working class regardless of their appearance. And later, as we'll see with the textile workers, regardless of their gender or age, it was the class that made the difference. Mary later said, and I quote, one of the best fellows we have is the black man. He knows what liberty is. He knows that in days gone by the bloodhounds were after his father over the mountains. And he knows his own mother wept and prayed for liberty. For these reasons he prizes his liberty and is therefore ready to fight for it, regardless of how they regarded each other. Both of these sets of people were crowded into an area of Memphis called Pinch Gut. So romantic. Reminds me of Soares and Boyle's Alley. I don't even want to tell you what that's a reference to. I would like to know if anyone recognizes Soares and Boyle's Alley.

[Becca]

Harry Potter.

[Susan]

It is not Harry Potter. Dickens. No, no.

[Becca]

Okay, those are my two guesses.

[Susan]

It's from Gilmore Girls.

[Becca]

Oh my goodness.

[Susan]

The town changed all the addresses and the Independence Inn got put on Soares and Boyle's Alley. Oh, and they didn't want to put that on their business girls. Memphis as a whole was. I mean, you can tell from Pinch gut that it we weren't in the money. Memphis as a whole though, was low lying and damp and sanitation was, shall we say, inadequate. People didn't understand the mechanisms or the vectors of disease and that ran rampant in this area. Cholera from contaminated water, yellow fever spread by mosquitoes and smallpox riding the coattails of the steamship passengers from New Orleans all laid claim to the population in waves. Just after the war. Miasma theory was alive. People went around thinking they were doing something, breathing through vinegar soaked handkerchiefs and municipalities shoveled lime on the worst areas that quarantine orders were issued. But there was very little anyone could do. To save themselves, but having run away in time. And unfortunately, Mary and her family did not escape.

[Becca]

It wouldn't be for another 38 years before it was known that this yellow fever, which is the epidemic that was hitting Mary and her family, was carried by mosquitoes, a certain type of mosquito. So in 1867, they didn't know that, and they did what you just talked about, you know, which was ineffective and cities like Memphis, which were muggier and breeding grounds for mosquitoes even now. So Memphis was hit hard by the yellow fever. Mary wrote later of this time in 1867, a yellow fever epidemic swept Memphis. Across the street from me, 10 persons lay dead from the plague. The dead surrounded us. They were buried at night with no ceremony. One by one, my four little children sickened and died. My husband caught the fever and died. I sat alone through nights of grief. No one came to me. No one could.

[Susan]

She wrote all about my house. I could hear weeping and the cries of delirium. Other homes were as stricken as was mine. All day long, all night long, I heard the grating of the wheel of the death cart. You have heard us talk about Hungryroot before and you know how much we love it because it is a life simplifier. We've got lots to do and lots of balls to juggle. And Hungerroot has been such a game changer really for kind of keeping us on track mentally.

[Becca]

Yeah, I like the personalization of Hungryroot. They plan my meals and my groceries for a full week. If that's what I want. If I only need a few days, that's what I get too. But Hungryroot learns what I like and then fills my cart with suggestions. And then I can go in and say yes, yes, yes, or take things out or whatever, but it learns every time you do that what you like.

[Susan]

Did you have a favorite recipe?

[Becca]

The last box I got, I got when my son is home from college and he's in his first apartment and leaning into learning how to cook. So he actually made all the recipes he loved. Creole pulled chicken chili.

[Susan]

Fun.

[Becca]

Yes. It took about 15 minutes to put together.

[Susan]

And for me, since half the time Chris Graham is away for work, I find it very easy to order from Hungry root salad kits. And also I am fond of ordering. I get on this jag where I'm like avocados, assorted cheeses, assorted crackers, fruits, and I will girl dinner it up right with no cooking at all. Whatever your lifestyle is, Hungryroot holds all of its food to high standards. It Screens out for over 200 additives, including high fructose corn syrup, artificial sweeteners and preservatives. And they only source high quality meat and seafood with no hormones or antibiotics. So Hungryroot makes it incredibly easy to get going and actually stick with whatever. Your New Year's resolution is to start fresh with healthy eating.

[Becca]

So give it a try. You're going to love Hungryroot as much as we do. For a limited time, get 40% off your first box, plus get a free item in every box for life. Go to hungryroot.com chicks and use code chicks. That's hungryroot.com chicks. Code chicks to get 40% off your first box and a free item of your choice for life.

[Susan]

Her entire family was wiped out. Suddenly, she had no one in her life. And Mary began to wear black, something she would do for the rest of her life.

[Becca]

In the aftermath of that tragedy, she wrote, after the union had buried my husband, I got a permit to nurse the sufferers. This I did until the plague was stamped out. So for some reason she's not getting it. Like, she's not getting sick or if she got it, it was a mild case and she got over it, which was possible.

[Susan]

Yellow fever is a virus, and I have a feeling from when we covered Marie Laveau that once you've gotten it, you are largely immune or get a much lighter case. And perhaps there was a circumstance in which she already had it.

[Becca]

Yeah.

[Susan]

So what on earth are you going to do after a tragedy like that that struck you? Well, she fled back to Chicago. Memphis was too much for her, and she went back to a trade she was familiar with, dressmaking.

[Becca]

She went back to dressmaking in Chicago. She could not go into a classroom with little children. I don't blame her one tiny bit. So she went back and again established a business with an unnamed partner, a woman, obviously. They opened up a dressmaking shop on Washington street in downtown Chicago. It's not that far away from where we're staying when we go there in.

[Susan]

June, she said as she was sewing for wealthy women of Chicago. I would look out the plate glass windows and see the poor shivering wretches, jobless and hungry, walking alongside the frozen lakefronts. She was contrasting their condition with that of, you know, she called it tropical comfort of the people that she sewed for. It's kind of like we were just talking about, there's abject poverty, but the leaders are cracking champagne and congratulating themselves on their good fortune. And the contrast was too much for Her.

[Becca]

She was doing this for four years, and the fact that she was working for these very wealthy people in Chicago tells me that her dressmaking skills were fantastic.

[Susan]

Right.

[Becca]

So, yeah, like you just said, she's seeing people living off the work of her people, her class of people.

[Susan]

The great Chicago fire began on the evening of October 8, 1871. There was a small barn on De Coven street on the city's southwest side. Now, we maybe have all heard the story of how Mrs. Oleary's cow kicked over a lantern. We don't 100% know if that is what happened. What is clear is Chicago had suffered months of drought. The city was largely built of wood. It was extremely vulnerable. Once the first building ignited, conditions were just primed for disaster. The fire spread with astonishing speed. It's not called the Windy City because of wind. It's called that because of politicians. But nevertheless, strong winds carried burning embers across streets, across the river, you know, even into the business district. There were nine separate fires raging that merged into an inferno. It took two and a half days for the fire to burn itself out. There was no possibility of fighting it. Effectively included, along with the massive destruction of was Mary Jones's dressmaking shop and.

[Becca]

Where she was living. It was all gone. She talks about how she had to run to the lake with hundreds and thousands of other people to get away from the fire. I have to say, I fell down a Chicago fire rabbit hole because I always assumed it was Mrs. Oleary's cow, but it turns out it was really Mrs. Oleary's barn. Probably not her cow, but.

[Susan]

Right, that's what I'm saying. We always blame the cow, but, like.

[Becca]

Right, but there's also the fact that the prejudice against Irish people was also prevalent in Chicago at this point. So blaming an o' Leary for such a tragedy just kind of tracks.

[Susan]

Luckily, we've deflected it to the cow, though.

[Becca]

Yeah, well, no, actually, I don't think it was the cow either. It could have been a neighbor who had come in to steal some milk, could have been some kids with a cigarette. It could have been anything that caught them on fire.

[Susan]

But. Yes, I'm just saying. You're saying that there's prejudice against Irish people, and I'm saying at least we've. At least we've mitigated it and pushed the blame onto the cow. Yeah, so Mary gave some hideous descriptions of herself huddling in the basement of a church along with thousands of other refugees for a good long time. And then, unfortunately, two years later, something called the Long Depression kicked off. This depression lasted more than five years. It was the longest economic slump in U.S. history. We know, of course, the Great Depression, right. That came later. This lasted even longer than that. The economic panic spread so fast that the New York Stock Exchange had to shut down. And in New York City, one out of every four workers was jobless. Things got rough, I mean, rough very quickly. In Chicago, unemployment shot up to 14%. Plenty of people who did have jobs were barely scraping by because what did the corporate overlords do when their profits were being slashed? They cut wages to less than half of what they'd been before. Thousands of businesses went bankrupt, you know, and dumped all their employees out into the ranks of the unemployed.

[Becca]

And even as a dressmaker to wealthy people, you know, there that's. They're going to cut back on that too. They're still wealthy, but, you know, there's certain things that they have to cut back on. And maybe another dress for the wife is not necessary. Mrs. Palmer has enough.

[Susan]

There was, as a result of these various elements, something called the Great Upheaval that began in West Virginia after the B and O Railroad that most of us know only from the Monopoly Board, cut wages for the third time in one year. It was also called the Great Railroad Strike. It was the very first strike that spread across multiple states in the United States. It was shocking how fast hundreds of thousands of people joined in. It led to the. To the rise of political parties, the Workingman's Party, the Greenback Labor Party, the Populist Party. Labor rights started to become a major national issue for both Republican and Democratic parties due to this strike.

[Becca]

She claims that at this point what she was doing was helping to organize strikers and to educate and to lecture. Evidence points to. Probably not, but I don't for one second think that she was not aware of this going on, was not going to those lectures herself, was not learning herself. You know, I don't know how much organizing she really did at this point, but she's there, she's learning about it. She's definitely becoming firmly entrenched on the side of labor, no question about it.

[Susan]

And cemented as she's observing the reactions to the strikers from the railroad industry. The Haymarket Affair, also known as the Haymarket Massacre or riot, depending on who's speaking, took place at a labor demonstration at Haymarket Square in Chicago. So she's there. And the rally began peacefully. The workers were striking for an eight hour workday. That's what the fight was for. Your right to have an eight hour Workday. Only the day before, a similar rally had ended up with two demonstrators being killed and in a scuffle, more demonstrators and police had been injured. So this rally was going okay. But tensions were high. Persons unknown threw a bomb at the police as they tried to disperse the meeting. And the bomb blast. And when the police retaliated with gunfire, caused the deaths of seven police officers and at least four ralliers. Dozens of others were wounded. All the positive pr, the tentative hopefulness of the labor movement was erased at one shot. The government said of the strikers, they have not got one honest aim or one honorable aim. And I hold them all personally responsible for any trouble that occurs from now on. Again, they were striking for the right to an eight hour workday. Possible progress on that was erased. There was a lockdown. There was a roundup of individuals. In the immediate aftermath, people were condemned to execution for their role in it. And there was great despair among the people struggling to improve work conditions. Mary herself, though, found purpose in the workers movement. She began attending labor meetings, especially those of the Knights of Labor. In particular, we talked about this during our Jane Addams episode. The very structure of our nation, in this case, it's also happening in England and everywhere else, was changing due to industrialization. Urban areas of the country were attracting large numbers of people coming in search of work. Cities, infrastructure just really could not support the amount of people that were coming in. And that is what Jane Addams and her people at Hull House were focused on. But another problem that we didn't cover as fully in that episode was the supply of labor made it very easy for employers to take advantage of workers in cruel and impersonal ways. Company towns, have you heard of that? Where? I know you have, Susan.

[Becca]

Yeah. I'm like, oh, I know all about them. Yeah.

[Susan]

Like company towns where the bosses erected the store and owned your house. And they paid not in money, but in what they called scrip or tickets. You know, pay to the bearer of this, like those love coupons you get for Mother's Day sometimes from very small children, like, hope you don't lose this piece of paper that's not replaceable, where you have to spend it at the store, where the prices are 400% more than they should be. But you can't go anywhere else else. There had been a movement to encourage mine workers to save 10% of their income for a rainy day. And the employer found out about that and therefore cut everyone's pay by 10% because it was obvious they didn't need it.

[Becca]

Right.

[Susan]

Objectors to these policies and others were branded as troublemakers. They were ejected from the workforce and therefore faced homelessness and starvation for themselves and for their children. And Mary began to organize.

[Becca]

She later said, I learned in the early part of my career that labor must bear the cross for others sins, must be the vicarious sufferer for the wrongs that others do. And she just felt strongly that she had a place in that world, lecturing and organizing and educating people.

[Susan]

She wrote later, I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said he'd stolen a pair of shoes. I told him, if you'd only stolen a railroad, you could be a United States senator. Oh.

[Becca]

You know, this whole time, this whole strike, this era, they were not successful as far as labor goes. They were not getting their demands met. You know, they were losing their jobs, they were losing their livelihood, they were putting their families in danger because they couldn't support them and they were kicked out of their housing. But what was happening on the next level down was that labor was seeing, you know, these working people were seeing the power that they had in their hands if they could just organize better. This whole strike at this point, they're not very organized. Sure, it spread across the country, but they were just kind of chaotic at this point.

[Susan]

Mary began organizing Miners for the United Mineworkers, the U M W, which is not easier to say than the full name, by the way, in Pennsylvania in the 1890s. I will tell you, from the very beginning, she was viewed as an amazing speaker. She could go into a room that was absolutely antagonistic toward her cause and by the end had the whole room of men weeping and promising to follow her into the light. There was just something about her. Mary moved from town to town in support of the struggles of the working people. From now on, she really didn't have a home per se. She wrote, I have no address, but where are my shoes have taken me. I abide where there is a fight against wrong.

[Becca]

Yeah, she has a lot of really good quotes. But along this time, since she's just getting into her labor fighting days, another thing she said was, no matter what your fight, don't be ladylike. So I think we need to put that in our head when we listen to the rest of her story. That's the kind of person she is. She's very cute, she's little, she's got an Irish brogue. At this point, her hair is starting to silver, she's wearing all, all black old fashioned dresses.

[Susan]

But she has a heart of Steel.

[Becca]

Yep.

[Susan]

How about this? Also, she was adept at organizing the wives and children of striking workers in demonstrations of their own on the workers behalves. And then she made this whole support system made from women. She called the mop and bucket brigades and they were the eyes and ears of the organizers. They provided a distraction sometimes so that strikers could sneak in to talk to the replacement workers, threaten them, I don't know, talk to them. On several occasions, she gathered women together for, I guess I'm going to call this a shame parade. The women wearing their aprons and their house dresses were banging pots and pans and carrying brooms to force the men to go on strike for the benefit of the entire community.

[Becca]

And she would also line up these mop and broom brigades of all these women with literally mops and brooms in front of the gates to the mines so that the strike busters, you know, the people that the management have hired at a less rate, they're like, you guys aren't going to work, you're going to go on strike. No problem. We're going to get the strike busters in there. And these groups of women would be blocking the entrance for the strike busters. I really think that that gave the women, you know, they could do something. You know, their husbands have been going to the mines, they've been tending the home fires. Now they've gotten a job they can do, they can contribute to this movement.

[Susan]

The management often tried a little trick. They would shut down the store and they would try to forbid neighboring farmers from supplying food to the striking workers and their families. So foraging teams, often organized by Mary herself, would go out all over the countryside, led by their chief forager, of course, Mary Jones, who could take the toughest rejectors, you know, the ones that freaked out and said no and yelled, they'd go ahead and send Mary Jones back out there and she would convert them into contributors. She often said during this period that she respected the power of women to enact change. She gets a lot of pressure from modern women, from not having been an advocate of suffrage and this is just me talking here.

[Becca]

No, I just.

[Susan]

I hear where you're going.

[Becca]

I agree. Go on.

[Susan]

I think she saw, especially in the American suffrage movement, she saw them as wealthy people advocating for the rights of other wealthy people, women or men, you know, to the detriment of the working class. She felt like the working class woman had not been embraced by the American suffrage movement. And so she would say things like, I don't need to vote, what I need is action. Of course, African American women like Mary Church Terrell and Ida B. Wells had the same feeling that the American suffrage movement had not been inclusive of women of color. So you have a decision to make. Do you join the movement hoping to be included at the fringes, asking to be included, or do you simply go around the whole thing and try to make change happen without bothering with the legalities of a vote if the movement is not going to invite you in?

[Becca]

Yeah, no, I agree completely. And there are a lot of quotes out there. I think I have a couple jotted down in here about things she actually said about suffrage. But I think that the suffragists doing their thing and her doing her thing with her people are getting women to the same place. Ultimately. I think they had the same big goal, overarching goal in mind. They're just going about it different ways.

[Susan]

She had also very little respect for other institutions, priests and preachers who tended to side with the mine owners during this period. Your job is to obey. They've been placed above you by God. Your reward will be in heaven, she said to the workers. She called the preachers sky pilots. I. Those sky pilots are misguided. And if we stick together, we can get a slice of heaven for you and your children right here on earth instead of waiting. Nice. Yeah, yeah. Ironically, she was known as the Miner's angel. So, like, it seemed like a lot of religious iconography started to be, like, equated with her. At one point, she was compared to Joan of Arcs type of thing. And I don't, you know, she liked the notoriety. She liked the thought that people were thinking of her that way. But the. The general premise, she was not a fan of. However, another name for her, another nickname began to rise to the top. She began to be referred to as Mother by the men of the unions that she helped.

[Becca]

Now, I am going to be cynical for a second. Was she called Mother because they called her that, or did they call her that because she told them to call her that?

[Susan]

Well, she no slouch in the using tools you were given departments, began a rebrand. I will say she reinvented herself as Mother Jones. She adopted the Persona of an elderly maternal, fiery defender of workers, and called the miners her boys. So who wagged? What dog? It's a chicken and egg situation.

[Becca]

Oh, totally, totally.

[Susan]

It is not often that we talk about one of our subjects adding significantly to her age, is it? But this is about when she began marketing herself as it ends up being inconveniently enough for mathematics. Seven years Older than she actually was. She couldn't just add 10, so it would be easy for historians to backdate it. No, no. So she's acting older. Mannerisms are getting more grandmother like. She had a signature black dress, a hat, her powerful voice. She had flowers on this little hat and in her lapels. She was a recognizable figure. She was an icon. And honestly, people started to be very afraid. She agitated people from coal fields to railroad company towns and coal camps of Colorado, anywhere where workers were fighting to organize a union. Ba Boing. Suddenly, Mother Jones was there and everyone was peeing their pants, which, again, she's.

[Becca]

Five feet tall, and at this point, she's got silvery hair and she's dressing like a grandmother, but she shows up with her, you know, her handbag and her voice. You know, she's a very powerful speaker. I read in a number of places about her voice. And we actually can link you to a video recording of her just before her death, where she didn't really have too much of a brogue left, but you can hear just a little bit in her voice. But she's adorable, you know, So I think a lot of women, especially like you and I, Beckett, who are not very tall, have this advantage and that people underestimate us, and I think they were doing the same thing for her.

[Susan]

We literally just talked about in the Martha Gellar podcast how she could get away with things because people would be like, oh, it's quote, just a woman. What could happen? And then you let the vampire in. Industrialist.

[Becca]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Susan]

And you invited her to come in, and then she did, and then you paid the price.

[Becca]

I, I, I don't know where to put this, but I feel like I need to say it, because we like to show you, you know, a 360 view of a woman, and out there, you will see that she was extraordinarily prejudiced against Chinese workers. So much so that part of the work that she did ended up getting into Congress as the Chinese Exclusion Act. It barred Chinese laborers and prevented Chinese people from becoming citizens. I mean, she did not have a lot to do with that end of it. But at the strikes, if there was Chinese laborers being brought in, she was on the other side. Right. So she was on the side of the, the other workers that were being replaced by Chinese workers, which in the railroads, especially when the transcontinental railroad was being built, 90% of the crews that built, ultimately built the transcontinental railroad were.

[Susan]

Chinese, as a finer point to that. So it was built from both directions. So the Ones coming from the California side toward the middle. That was where the majority of the Chinese labor operated. And then the teams that were building from the east, in this case the Union Pacific, it was mostly Irish immigrants and African Americans. Typically. There were not a lot of Chinese workers hired for that end. There was great objection to Chinese workers all throughout the railroad unions. Racism, certainly, yes. Fear of losing one's job to a lower paid job. Immigrant worker, also, yes. Fear of the unknown, yes. Mother Jones, as we have seen, is pretty egalitarian when it comes to workers rights. But she sort of drank the Kool Aid of the unionist stance that the Chinese workforce as a whole was not good for the labor movement at all. So nobody is certainly perfect. And we would be remiss if we did not point out this particular flaw, one which she shared, by the way, with most other union organizers of the time. She was not alone in this.

[Becca]

I really admire her for a lot of her work. And this is just like. I don't know, I look at it as like a stumble to me from modern eyes. But at the time I could kind of understand why she's making these decisions. There was a strike early in her career and it was one of the ones that she first got into the newspapers. She's starting to get noticed by the press. And it was a strike in California against Chinese laborers coming in.

[Susan]

I had no idea that cotton and satin were causing my mermaid hair to frizz up and to cause we call them Brinkles, where you get wrinkles from your pillowcase on your head. Until I switch to Blissy.

[Becca]

Yeah, I have a good hair day. And I know when I go to sleep on my Blissy pillowcase that I'll be able to have a good hair day the next day too, which was not the case when I was sleeping on just cotton pillowcases. They help also with anti aging. Silk pillowcases have hydration qualities.

[Susan]

Nice. I know. Well, in this era of the heater sucking every drop of moisture from the air, in the house of wood, I will take whatever I can get. And Blissy really does help with keeping your product on your visage.

[Becca]

Because Blissy pillowcases are made from 100% pure mulberry silk. They are not satin. Satin is inexpensive for a reason, but silk is a natural fiber. It has cooling properties, it's gentler on your skin and your hair, and it's fully machine washable.

[Susan]

So it is not a shrinking violet. It can take whatever you dish out. Also, there are over 100 colors you can match any decor and anybody's decor. Because a Blissey pillowcase makes an excellent gift.

[Becca]

They do. And there's other accessories that you can get. Sleep masks. My daughter has a Blissey sleep mask. She loves it. Bonnets. I have a couple. And crease preventing scrunchies. I've never tried those. Maybe I should. Yeah.

[Susan]

Because sometimes when you, when you put your hair up and then you take it down because you're going to dinner, you're like, oh no. And you've got the line of doom. Oh no. You think now I guess I'm gonna have to leave it up. Because your listeners. Blissey is offering 60 nights risk free plus an additional 30% off when you [e-mail] historychicks that's blissy b l-I s.

[Becca]

S-Y.Com historychicks and use code historychicks to get an additional 30% off.

[Susan]

Your skin and hair will thank you. Well, in 1894, she began speaking publicly about what she called child exploitation in the mines. From time immemorial, there have been workers called trap boys whose whole job was to stay underground for 12 to 16 hours a day and open and close doors, talking to no one, seeing no light, all alone. Underground. Breaker boys were those that would separate the rocks as they were all rattling down a chute. I mean, think about sharp rocks headed toward your teeny tiny hands for again 12 and 16 hours a day. They were often injured on the job and they were often under the age of 10 in textile mills. That's who took the girls. The young girls worked in the silk mills and factories. And it's interesting to me, in addition to the humanitarian part of her anti child labor message, she really had a practical facet of it too. First, by being able to hire children at a depressed wage that depressed wages for the entirety of the labor force, you know. And secondly, by keeping wages low, employers practically forced people to put their children at an early age into the workforce just in order to survive. And therefore nobody could fight the good fight because they were all treading water to try to stay alive when it should be. The adults in the household can make a living wage enough to support the rest of the family without having to rely on the wages of small children. She wrote, the employment of children is doing more to fill prisons, insane asylums, almshouses, reformatories, slums and gin shops than all the efforts of reformers are doing to improve society.

[Becca]

In that same year you were just talking about 1894, she's getting to be about 60 at this point. There was a organized March to Washington D.C. from different places across the United States. It was organized by a man named Jacob Coxie. And his goal was to bring a bill to Congress asking for 500 million in federal spending to create jobs and build infrastructure throughout the United States so that people can go to work. Does that sound familiar? Grover Cleveland could have gotten the New Deal, but it didn't happen.

[Susan]

But Grover Cleveland didn't have either Eleanor Roosevelt nor Frances Perkins.

[Becca]

That's right. That's true. Mary's participation in this was that she organized her own army as one of these marches from Kansas City heading towards Washington. Along the way, she stopped and gave speeches. She helped fundraise. Along the way they made it all the way across the state of Missouri to St. Louis. Unfortunately, another one of the organizers helped himself to the funds that she was raising. And the group couldn't get any farther than St. Louis, Missouri. They couldn't get over the river. But the rest of the group, 500 marchers, did reach Washington D.C. and Coxie and his organizing partner were both arrested for walking on the grass at the Capitol. So the march just kind of dissolved. The bill was never presented. But what it was was the first large scale protest march on Washington D. And a legacy that I think Coxy would probably be proud of today because it's still happening.

[Susan]

Right. And I also think, I mean, you referred to that was percolating, wasn't it? The idea that a series of infrastructure projects could be created by the federal government to put people who are out of work to work and therefore begin the engine. I mean, a dollar that is running around is what the economy needs to recover, Right?

[Becca]

Right.

[Susan]

No, a dollar that's transferring from person to person is the goal. So right. In the Kansas City Star, Mary was referred to as, quote, the mother of the commonwealters. So even in the papers, she's a mother. The country cannot seem to catch a break. There was another major depression in 1893 called the Panic. That's reassuring. At the beginning of the Panic, a man named George Pullman, who made Pullman cars, had reduced his wages by about a third because of falling sales. But he did not cut rent. It was a very paternalistic company. He did not cut prices at his company store. He didn't give any cost of living adjustments to anybody. And so the employees filed a complaint, so he fired them. And then the American Railroad Union called for a massive boycott. Any train that carried a Pullman car was to be not allowed to run. And it affected most rail lines west of Detroit, it was. A quarter of a million workers in 27 states participated. Yeah, wow.

[Becca]

We talked about that. Was it, was that in Jane Adams?

[Susan]

Yes, yes, I think so.

[Becca]

We talked a lot about that.

[Susan]

Well, President Grover Cleveland was besieged by his industrialist friends and deployed federal troops to Chicago to break the boycott. And of course, what did this lead to? Violence and death. This conflict really set federal power against state power. The governor was not on the side of having the federal troops come to his city. I'm very sorry that that case is the one that set a precedent for federal intervention in labor disputes. Mother Jones was far away. She wasn't in town. She was in Birmingham, Alabama, where she was helping minors doing during a nationwide coal strike that was happening at the same time. Man, that was a lot. But Mother Jones rallied support for the labor leader. His name is Eugene V. Dabs. Super famous. He was actually jail having instigated that strike. And Mary organized a massive show of support for him. After he served his prison sentence, he defied a court order not to disrupt railroad traffic. The ultimate thing. They said he was blocking the mail from traveling. And that's what they got him on after the strike was over. And I will say to Grover Cleveland's credit, he got a commission together and he decided that company towns were un American and basically they forced the Pullman company to come to concessions. So hooray for that. And as a matter of fact, also he designated Labor Day as a federal holiday as a result of that particular strike. So those are some benefits that came out of that violent, turbulent time.

[Becca]

At this point in her life, Mary really begins to move freely about the country. Wherever there's a strike, she goes. Whenever she hears about labor being pressured in any way, she goes. And when she goes, she's giving speeches, she's observing what's going on, she's meeting all the people on the ground, she's getting into factories. She would get a job sometimes in a factory so that she can see firsthand what was going on in there. And at one she said, in Cottondale, Alabama, I was given work in the factory. And there I saw little children working. The most heart rending spectacle in all of life. Sometimes it seemed to me I could not look any more at those silent little figures that I must go north to the grim coal fields, to the Rocky Mountain camps where the labor is at least fought by grown men. So she's spending a lot of time within factories, seeing the work that children are being forced to do for pennies. Dangerous work. And you know, I did read also the that the children were calling her mother. And so that's how the name got going. But what it tells me is I know that the minors were calling her mother, and I know that the children were calling her mother. So my guess is that she told them to call her mother, which is fine.

[Susan]

Well, I mean, my whole family calls me Boo. Yeah, that's right. Top to tail. Everyone calls me Boo. It's just how it is.

[Becca]

Someday we're going to be in a street somewhere and I'm going to want to get your attention, and you're going to be. Be 50ft ahead of me.

[Susan]

I'm just gonna yell, book and see what happens and I'll turn around. That's right. I recognize it.

[Becca]

Right? No, Kitty.

[Susan]

As she began to travel and speak and infiltrate, she became famous. She was photographed widely. She became a national figure in labor activism. And I'm not sure, honestly, if this is the first time, but she did get jailed. Well, charged with crimes and then jailed in West Virginia. Around this time, the judge in the case said the following, and I quote, I cannot forbear to express my great surprise that a woman of the intelligence of Mrs. Jones should permit herself to be used as an instrument by designing and reckless agitators who seem to have no regard for the rights of others. It would have been far better for her to follow the regular lines which the all wise being intended. Her sex should pursue many charities. She could engage in a lawful character that would be more in keeping with what we have been taught and what experience has shown us to be the true sphere of womanhood. So she thought it was unjust at this time to deny voting and higher education and opportunity to women in America because the benefit the nation got from their labor gave them the right to participate in decisions that affected the country. Who has a better right? She asked. Has she not given you birth? Has she not raised you and cared for you? Has she not struggled along with you? Then she said, when the Galilean was here, which is how she referred to Jesus, which makes me.

[Becca]

Lol.

[Susan]

Did he appeal to men for sympathy and love? No. When all the world looked dark around him, when men said, hang him, Mary and the others stood by him him and said, we love you. And to the judge, she said, and I'm paraphrasing, I will probably see you again in jail. Chachi. Paraphrasing.

[Becca]

Chachi.

[Susan]

Yeah. A district attorney in West Virginia actually called her the most dangerous woman in America in 1902 at her trial for ignoring an injunction banning meetings by striking minors. There sits the most dangerous woman in America. Said that attorney. She comes into a state where peace and prosperity reign. Crooks her little fingers and 20,000 otherwise contented men lay down their tools and just walk out.

[Becca]

If she just followed the rules.

[Susan]

That's really funny. Yeah, she was pretty fearless. You know, there was at least one point where a local magistrate closed and locked the door of the hall, like the fellowship hall or whatever to prevent her from having a meeting. And she showed up down there and she said, oh, I'm just telling you the doors will be open at 8 whether you open them or eye open em. And she just gave him the little sweetest smile and like he unlocked the door like okey dokey.

[Becca]

I don't think she said it at about this time, but this quote is popping in my head. She said, quote, get it straight. I'm not a humanitarian, I'm a hellraiser.

[Susan]

I love it. But here is her point. The seeds of division were sown by the people who owned the mines because they had the most, most benefit coming from making sure people fought each other to get the lowest pay. The enemy seeks to conquer you by dividing your ranks. In making distinctions between American and foreign. You're 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 of no east, west, north, south when it comes to my class fighting the battle for justice. If it is my fortune to live to see the industrial chain broken from every working man and child in America and then there is one black child in Africa still in bondage, there I shall go. So she is basically saying, I don't know why we're fighting among each other. Remember who the enemy is, Katniss.

[Becca]

Even when people were saying things like you're not supporting suffrage and you know, she kind of threw out some quotes that I think they're taken out of context to be perfectly honest. So I'm not going to give them. But one of the things she said was, and it supports what you just said, I'm not an anti anything which brings freedom to my class. That would be the working class. She was just focused on that. Her ideal was there will be no robber class and no working class. So meaning everybody's equal.

[Susan]

I don't, I don't know if it was everybody's equal because she actually did, along with the Socialist Party not want to necessarily take property from people. She just wanted there to be a knowledge that the people actually Producing the valuable goods or services for the company should be fairly compensated. So there shouldn't be someone living in mud and someone pouring the last of the champagne away because it had gone flat. You know, like there needed to be some middle ground.

[Becca]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Susan]

So Susan brought this up just a second ago, and I had talked about earlier how she was very shocked at the condition that children working children were subjected to. She had seen the mining children, and her foray into her work made her see the mill children. And it was during a silk strike in Philadelphia. There were a hundred thousand workers that walked off the job, including 16,000 children. So that's, you know, 16% of the workforce. There were actually under 15 is what they called children working. They left their jobs. And you know what the demand was? The demand was we would like our work week cut from 60 hours to 55 hours. That's all they were asking for. And so Mother Jones decided to organize a parade in this town, A parade of children carrying signs that said, we want to go to school and not to the mills. The parade was so successful in Mother Jones's mind that she, in her own words, asked the mothers of the town if she could borrow their offspring for 10 days for a little project she had in mind.

[Becca]

What she wanted to do was take a group of children from Philadelphia, where the textile mills were, to New York so she could stop it along the way, different towns, and give speeches. Her idea was that when they got to a town, that people would welcome them, maybe feed them, maybe help fundraise. And in exchange, she would give speeches. The kids would do skits. There'd be a little entertainment on this marching to New York.

[Susan]

She also wanted to highlight the fact that these children were becoming injured during their work in. In this case, the textile mills. It was a very dangerous place to work. A lot of times these little children who didn't have shoes were climbing into these machines. Their small hands were considered the best for untangling knots in the material within machinery that was still running.

[Becca]

They would work 14 hours a day for two weeks, and at the end of that, receive 50 cents, she said. She said when they go to work in the morning, they never know that they might have to sacrifice an arm, a leg, or a life during the day. Many are crippled or killed outright. The news is kept skillfully from the newspapers.

[Susan]

And so it was time to bring it all out into the open. She organized the children, started out with a hundred, and they set off from Philadelphia to New York City. And their goal was to show the Quote, New York millionaires, our grievances. But where she was headed specifically was the summer house of President Theodore Roosevelt, a place called Oyster Bay on Long Island. We've been there. Yes, we have. Beautiful home, it really is. She decided that she was going to make him witness the absolute difference between these children and their ragtag appearance and suffering upbringing. She wanted him to compare these children to his own children who were summering at this lovely establishment.

[Becca]

Later, she wrote, I decided to go with the children to see President Roosevelt and ask him to have Congress pass a law prohibiting the exploitation of children. At this point in time, 1 in 6 children in the United States under the age of 16 worked. They didn't go to school, and they made up to a third of the family's income. That's how poorly paid everybody was. She wanted to, like I said, stop in different towns, including New York, where she said, I'm going to picture capitalism and caricature to the money mad. I'm going to show Wall street the flesh and blood from which it squeezes its wealth. Powerful. This walk, it's about 130 miles. It's going to take them three weeks to do it. It's in the summer. They started out really strong at about 300 people. It wasn't just all children. It was also union workers, mill workers, the parents of the kids. They started off from Philadelphia, and it worked just like she thought it would, where they'd stop in each town and do these speeches and skits. They were coming up against some rain and some muggy conditions, and she's. She's getting up there. She's in her 60s. She was getting a lot of grief because she didn't walk the whole thing herself. Like, okay, you know, she might have stayed in a hotel while everybody else was camping out at the river edge. Well, give her that little indulgence, I say, but that's just me reaching about the same age. But these groups that would come out to watch them, in each town in Trenton, New Jersey, 50,000 people turned out, is the estimate. That's a lot.

[Susan]

Well, it's a lot. And ultimately, ultimately, she would have liked to see Theodore Roosevelt, but the Secret Service would not have it. No, they at the very last moment turned Mother Jones and her children's crusade firmly from the door. And he would not entertain even coming out of the house to observe them or anything like that. But what this did was bring the public eye. Even the President had to know about this, right? Hide in his house as he did. I don't think the Coxey's army march was a failure either. It didn't get results immediately and neither did this. But just think ahead just a couple of decades and when you have a different Roosevelt office and Eleanor Roosevelt at his side and Frances Perkins pushing for child labor reform among lots of other activists, I mean, sometimes you're a chapter in the book, right? You know, and that's what this was. And she even thought this was successful, even though a lot of people peeled off, the whole party didn't make it, and the president ultimately did not fall in line. I think she accomplished what she set out to do.

[Becca]

After the march, she said that she was disappointed. She wanted the president to, quote, hear the wail of the children who never have a chance to go to school. School but work from 10 to 11 hours a day in the textile mills of Philadelphia weaving carpets. He walks on. I mean, she had a way.

[Susan]

Newspaper man, here is your pull quote.

[Becca]

I know.

[Susan]

Thanks ma'. Am. And you know, made his job easier. Went right in and put it in the paper.

[Becca]

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[Susan]

That same year she traveled traveled without children to the Union Miners Cemetery in Mount Olive, Illinois to attend the Miners Day memorial service. There had been. It's interesting during this movement that they refer to strikes and opposition to the strikes as the Battle of so and so. This was a memorial service for the miners that were killed at the Battle of Verdon, Illinois five years ago. And I kind of want to tell you more about this incident in particular, but I will wait until the end because there's a complicated facet of this that probably doesn't fit in the flow right here. And I'll mention it later because Verdon comes up again. But this was the first time that she went back to visit and she did repeatedly visit this area and this memorial. It was on her travels back and forth. So it was kind of like a, like a touchstone for her. The closest, honestly kind of the closest to an old home place that she really had. Yeah. During these years in 1905, she helped to found the Industrial Workers of the World IWW Union in Chicago. And then over the next few years she continued organizing everybody, miners, steel workers, garment workers. And during this time she was repeatedly arrested for disturbing the peace, for inciting riots.

[Becca]

Yeah, in one source that I read, they said she was held in more jails in more states than any other labor leader of the time.

[Susan]

Yes, and the most famous labor leader right now, Eugene Debs, he who had served time for the Pullman strike, wrote about Mother Jones in his magazine called the Hellraiser Journal. Again and again has this dauntless soul been driven out of some community by corporation hirelings, enjoined by courts, locked up in jail, prodded by the bayonets of soldiers and threatened with assassination. But never once in all her self surrendering life has she shown the white feather. Never once has she given a single sign of weakness or discouragement. No other soldier in this revolutionary cause has a better right to recognition in this edition than Mother Jones. Her very name expresses the spirit of the revolution. Her striking personality embodies all its principles. She's won her way into the hearts of the nation's toilers and her name is revealed at the altars of their humble firesides and will be lovingly remembered by their children and Their children's children forever.

[Becca]

Nice. And she's still alive to read that.

[Susan]

Yeah, I know. You know, again, I say tell your heroes before they go. Oh, yeah, yeah. We can't possibly cover all the strikes that she attended. I mean, there's a lot. It's state to state, country to country. She's been in Mexico, et cetera. In 1912, miners went on strike again in the same West Virginia coal fields in which she was called the most dangerous woman in the world. A certain mine called Paint Creek Creek refused to play ball. They actually hired guards, armed guards, to harass and intimidate all the miners and their families with threats of violence. And it wasn't just threats, because the violence turned real. And it was called the Paint Creek, Cabin Creek strike of 1912. And it started something called the West Virginia Mine Wars. Mother Jones was in Colorado and hurried back to West Virginia to help people. You know, she said she was back. The West Virginia governor twice declared martial law in the region as the strike continued. As the violence continued and the intimidation never stopped, the authorities, instead of arresting the operator's goons, arrested Mother Jones and moved her to this sort of military prison, I'm going to say. But it was like she was a lady and she was older, and also she's kind of famous. Yeah. He actually put her. Imprisoned her in a boarding house instead of state prison.

[Becca]

Now she's about 75 at this point, and she is put on trial for conspiracy to commit murder. And she was found guilty, also inciting.

[Susan]

A riot and destruction of property, which are lesser charges, but the capital charge of attempted murder was the big one.

[Becca]

When asked how she pled, she said, I have no defense to make. Whatever I have done in West Virginia, I've done all over the United States, and when I get out, I will do it again.

[Susan]

That was.

[Becca]

How do you plead?

[Susan]

Again I say, I'll see you again, Chati.

[Becca]

That's right. That's right.

[Susan]

She managed to smuggle a message out. I literally don't know how. I don't know that smuggle is the right word. She probably just handed it to somebody sympathetic who took it away. The message that she wrote was taken to the Senate, and Senator John Kern of Indiana wanted to start an investigation into the conditions that were leading to this unrest. Like, why are we putting a band aid on this? What caused these people to be so unhappy? Why are the minors so upset? Why is Mother Jones so intent on changing their situation? Eventually, due to public pressure and pressure from those in Congress, the governor had to release her with a pardon for her and for everyone else of her party who had been arrested under the martial law that was in place place in this area at the time. And he maybe thought that was going to just, okay, we're done, right? We're done. But unfortunately, no. Congress did start an investigation into the conditions and took an interest and started passing laws.

[Becca]

I'm just going to go back two sentences because when she was released, she ended up serving like three months in this boarding house. But I just kind of love her flair for the dramatic after the three months she was released from, as she said, the iron hands of capitalism.

[Susan]

You know, she does have a way with words.

[Becca]

She does. I, I, and I'm just imagining her, you know, saying this. I, I kind of love it. It's feisty, right? And we've talked about this before. When women get to a certain age, their filter is, it thins. They're, they're done. They're tired of being the peacemaker and they're tired of holding back and they just let it go from their brain out their mouth. And I think she is a great.

[Susan]

Example of that, that she might have been like this. Actually, I had wondered if she'd been like this since her entire family died. Like, well, yes, whatever happens, happens then.

[Becca]

Yeah, yeah, she had nothing. What do I have to live for? I'll just do what I can until my time is up. I'm, this is me just making up what she's saying. I, I don't have a drug. Right. Yeah.

[Susan]

Well, Mother Jones was not present for this, but there was an incident in Colorado called the Machine Gun Massacre. And National Guardsmen raided this tent colony of striking miners and ended up killing mostly women and children. And it shocked the country. And she traveled telling that story. And, you know, she can tell a story. She brings you right into the room. It's almost as if she could create a movie, right, just by talking to you. And she was asked to testify before the US Congress, even though she hadn't been there. She had collected information and gotten stories and details, and she was asked to testify there. And she told Congress in, among other things, I know now there are no limits to which the powers of privilege will not go to keep the workers in slavery.

[Becca]

At one point, a senator said to her that she was the grandmother of all agitators. And her response was, I hope to live long enough to be the great grandmother of all agitators.

[Susan]

Do you know what that reminds me of? Have you ever seen that thing where the mom using gentle parenting is asking the little girl like, are you going to be part of the problem or are you going to be part of the solution? And the little girl goes, I'm going to be the whole problem. That's what this reminds me of. I love it. People in power often asked Mother Jones to testify in their information gathering sessions as they were turning over reform legislation. In 1915, she went to New York City and testified in front of President Wilson's Industrial Labor Commission on behalf of the efforts of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. That union had become prominent. A lot of attention had been brought to workers rights through the horrifying tragedy of the Triangle shirtwaist fire a few years before in New York City. So while Mother Jones was working diligently on workers rights and collective bargaining rights, our old friend Frances Perkins was working on improving workplace safety. There was a general air of reform in industry at this time.

[Becca]

Really, through her late 70s and early 80s, her life pretty much looked like this. There's a strike, she gives speeches, she organizes strikers, she educates people. Repeat. That was her life over and over and over again. All over the country.

[Susan]

There was a strike, an incipient strike coming in August 1921 in the area of Blair Mountain in West Virginia. I think this one defies the pattern. And so we're going to tell you about it. And Mother Jones, actually, contrary to her usual technique and spirit, tried to stop thousands of armed miners going to strike. She knew that the county had brought in law enforcement, had brought in mercenaries, had brought in goons, and they were heavily armed, primed to fight no matter what. They. They were just gonna lay waste to people. They weren't going to hesitate. They were primed for anger, you know, and she feared that this confrontation would end in a massacre. There was going to be no negotiation, so live to fight another day on this one, unusually, but the odds were just not in their favor. She met with the miners ahead of time on their way there and warned, this is just going to be bloodshed shed. She even produced this document out of her pocket, she said was a telegram from the president, in this case, Warren Harding, promising that he personally would address the owner's worst crimes if the miners would just turn back. But, you know, unusually, again, her charm didn't work. Her chicanery and technique didn't work. And they demanded to see the paper, right? And of course, since it wasn't real, she couldn't produce it. And they refused to call off the march. And it didn't end very well. She took a hit to her reputation for Trying to stop the march. She was castigated. You know, all what have you done for me lately? I guess, like decades of work. Mm. And then she ineffectively tried to trick them this one time, and they had a hard time forgiving her for it, I'm sorry to say.

[Becca]

Yeah, that always blows my mind. We talk about these women in these extraordinary lives they live, and then they had one or two things that we can't agree with. And, you know. You know, humanity probably can't agree with some of them, but I'm not going to disregard them completely because of this one thing.

[Susan]

Right.

[Becca]

Even though it's a big thing, But I just can't disregard their entire life's work. The end.

[Susan]

Well, and, you know, her motives were good. She was trying to save them.

[Becca]

Yes.

[Susan]

I guess it would take a lot for her to be afraid. And so when someone that is otherwise brave tells you something is going to go down, that's not good, you should probably like, oh, yeah. Oh, this has transcended her warning signals.

[Becca]

Right.

[Susan]

We should definitely listen. Well, anyway, she didn't stop. That didn't stop her from organizing. But her last public appearance on the protest front Anyway was in 1924. She marched with and spoke to support and rally some striking dressmakers in Chicago. And that seems like a brilliant full circle moment from her having opened a dressmaking shop in Chicago before the fire. And now this will be her final act in Chicago.

[Becca]

Yeah, no, I love that nice tidy bow. In about 1923, she is real age about 86, she decides that it's time to write her autobiography. Well, there's no, like, huge stack of letters or journals that she kept. It was just all in her memory. And while she didn't actually write it, she dictated it to a journalist, a woman, Mary Field Parton, and just told stories not of Mary Harris Jones. Jones, but of Mary Jones. She was getting bogged down in it. At one point she told a friend, I'm getting so damn tired of writing this book. And the end result went through that journalist and went through a couple of editors, and it did not meet her vision at all. And when we read it, I was disappointed that she. What did you say earlier? Like, read it as a fables or something?

[Susan]

Yeah, this is one of those cases of is it someone buying their own press? I mean, her early timeline, in fact, can in no way be corroborated. There's like, in no way do those years match. She often placed herself in conflicts or scenarios in which there's no way geographically she could have Been there, right? It's more like, what did I say? Parables of advancement and philosophy than an actual factual birth to death tale of what she had been through. It was more like documentation of way of thinking, I guess.

[Becca]

Yes. No, that's perfect. As she's getting on in years we've said that she never had a house, she never had a place to call home after the Chicago fire. At this point in her life, her main port was with some dear friends who lived just outside of Washington D.C. so that was a good place for her to be, you know, next to the political action.

[Susan]

Mother Jones celebrated her self proclaimed home hundredth birthday there with her friends on May 1, 1930. She had a cake with a hundred candles in it that had been donated by the baker's union. She was filmed making a statement for a newsreel.

[Becca]

She was. And we will link you up to it. You can watch. I was amazed that somebody who was born in the 1830s, we could watch a video of her.

[Susan]

And what she says is interesting to me. Let me just read it. It's really short and then I want to say something. It's about it. She said, I long to see the day when labor has the destiny of the nation in her own hands and she will be a united force and show the world what the workers can do. Note the pronouns, note the pronouns. Labor as a concept has been portrayed as a feminine ideal. See Statue of Liberty. Yeah. See Marianne.

[Becca]

Yeah.

[Susan]

Columbia. You know what I mean? Like the, the mythical goddess figures that represent virtue. So she has cast labor as one of those mythical goddesses.

[Becca]

Well, in French, wouldn't labor have to have a pronoun l or la man?

[Susan]

Don't get me started on the genders of nouns. It breaks my spirit every time. I wasn't saying a noun, I was saying a concept of. But yes.

[Becca]

Oh, she came out and she celebrated the party with people. She actually gave a speech before she went in and made that recording that we can still watch. But one of the things she said in her speech was America was not founded on dollars, but on the blood of men who gave their lives for your benefit. Power lies in the hands of labor, but labor has not learned to use it. So she's. She's still pretty feisty. Her body is starting to give out, but her brain and her purpose are still raging in. I have developed over the course of the last two months a new nighttime skin ritual. I wash my face. I use osea's Dream Night Serum, and then I use osea's Dry Dream Night Cream and then I go to bed. These two products are clinically tested formulas. They are powered by bioretinol and designed to reduce visible effects of stress on your skin while you sleep. I can see it like sometimes you use products and you know they're working. This one, I can see it working and I go walking. I go walking for three to four miles every day even in the cold weather and that is rough on my skin. It is really dry and I could feel my skin just getting tight. So this new nighttime ritual is really helping me.

[Susan]

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[Becca]

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[Susan]

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[Susan]

Now of course this was neither her real birth year nor birth date. We can speculate she fabricated her birth date so it would fall on May 1, which is international Workers Day. Famous May Day is a famous labor holiday. So reinforcing her standing as a labor activist and then that hundred year. Woo. That's a good one. That's a good round scenario.

[Becca]

Yeah.

[Susan]

So I think she picked well for her profession.

[Becca]

No, I, I agree completely. And I love that she's the one who insisted on having this party. It was her idea. She wanted to celebrate her hundredth birthday. It's kind of like having a celebration of life, you know, while you're still there to celebrate your life.

[Susan]

Life. That's good.

[Becca]

Yeah. Mary held on for several months after that party. She was reading newspapers and letters from bed. She welcomed any friends who had come to visit, who Knew that the end was near. And on November 30, 1930, most likely, 93 year old Mary Harris Jones died in her sleep.

[Susan]

She was buried in the Union Miners Cemetery in Mount Olive, Illinois. And this is what I wanted to talk about before. This is the site of another battle. They're all called the battle of this, the battle of that. This was called the Battle of Verdan or the Verdan Massacre. She was not there. She was not there. This is something that happened when she was away doing other work. So here's the, like, very, very short story. There were some miners that were striking. The owners decided they would bring in what they call scabs, which are people willing to break a strike and just work and kind of undercut the power of the strike. Okay, so scabs hated individuals. In this case case, the owners brought in train cars full of these scabs. The miners fired on the cars, the mine, the, the train was withdrawn, the scabs disappeared. It was like a general victory type of thing. The bad thing is these individuals in the train were simply black men and their families who'd been recruited for a great job opportunity. They had no idea, idea that they were the bad guys in this scenario. They had no idea that it was not safe to bring their wife and children. From their perspective, this was a great opportunity and they had to seize it. You know, monetarily it would save their families. And so everybody came to move for this great opportunity. And here they are, bullets coming through the walls. They all got taken away out of the site to this one place. And then the owners decided they wouldn't be responsible for their safety. After 6pm they were on their own. And several of the men tried to run from the place where they were all like hiding to the train station and were beaten almost to death. And universally in the press, even though these men and their families had no bad intentions toward the miners whatsoever, they were universally castigated as strike breakers, the villains in this piece. That county for decades was a sundown town where no people of color were welcome after 6pm for decades, decades, because of this incident. So yes, on the surface, it was a great victory for the union. I'm not entirely sure how much of the rest of that story is known by Mother Jones. I'm guessing not very many. She was not a racist, except for the Chinese thing. She was not against African American workers or minors. And I think she really could have seen their side of the story. Well, that aside, that aside, which I hope they're going to commemorate, that that part bothered me, obviously, about this story, but from the, like, the surface level, that it was a very good victory for the. The miners who chased away the people that were going to undercut the strike or whatever. That site was on Mother Jones's way on the train from here, from there. She came there a lot. It was a great kind of a base. It was the closest thing she had to a home, Honestly, for almost 30 years, this town and this place. And she called these miners her boys. Like, she called all the miners her boys. She actually especially passed. She wrote a letter as she was elderly and requested that she be buried here. It was a turning point in labor struggles. It was one of the first times there'd been such a rout, and the owners had to back down. So today, she is buried in the Union Miner cemetery. And in 1932, after she died, about 15,000 mineworkers gathered in this town to protest against the United Mine Workers because they felt like they were being betrayed by them. They decided, these miners, that they were going to make a monument on her grave, proper headstone. They had saved up a lot of money during the Depression. They got a hold of $16,000 in 1936 money. And they bought 80 tons of pink granite with bronze statues of miners, a flat carving of mother Jones. And 50,000 people showed up to see it unveiled on October 11, which is now known as Miners Day and celebrated in the town of Mount Olive as Mother Jones Day.

[Becca]

In 1976, Mother Jones magazine, named for her, obviously had its first publication. This surprised me. I love it. It's a nonprofit organization that runs this magazine. It's still being published. And Mother Jones Magazine really is famous for its deep dive investigative journalism. That's what they focus on. In 2020, a plaque in her honor was hung in the city of Cork, Ireland, with one of her quotes that said, pray for the dead, but fight like hell for the living. Yay.

[Susan]

In 1984, she was inducted into the National Women's hall of Fame.

[Becca]

Nice. And in 2026, there is an organization called the Mother Jones Museum. We will link you up to it. It's an online museum. It's a beautiful website. There's all kinds of information. But they were instrumental in a fundraising campaign to get an actual statue of Mother Jones built. I can't say when. At some time in this year, there will be the unveiling of the Mother Jones statue in a very prominent place in Chicago.

[Susan]

We are going. We are going to Chicago in June. I hope they're done by then.

[Becca]

Yes, I Know, I was communicating with one of the organizers of it, and she kind of put us on an embargo on announcing anything specific, although she did tell us. So. Yeah, it's a very prominent location. Very fitting. That's all I can say.

[Susan]

Okay. And that will do it for our coverage of the life of Mother Jones. And now it's time for media and as usual, books, take the first step, the autobiography biography we talked about. Now take that with. Take a salt shaker. Put it in your pocket.

[Becca]

I literally wrote, bring a big shaker of salt.

[Susan]

Yeah. So that is. I think, as a matter of fact, you know what? I would read biographies a couple and then go back and read that. And I think that is a fine thing. It's almost like, make sure you read the biography and then go see the movie, because the movie's always going to do some narrative economy, some spiciness. They're going to cut out characters that didn't fruit further the. The story. It's fine. You don't usually expect it to be called an autobiography. Yeah, you can actually read the autobiography for free online. So it's published online by the Industrial Workers of the world, the IWW. That's the organization she helped found in 1905. And so the whole autobiography is on their website. So the two biographies that I liked, Mother Jones the Miner's angel by Dale Featherling and Mother Jones the Most Dangerous Woman in America by Elliot Gorn.

[Becca]

Another biography that I used was Mother Raising Cain in Consciousness by Simon Cordery. It's probably the shortest of all these books. And there's a lot of illustrations, which, as we know, I'm a child. I like pictures. There's also her correspondence. Now, she didn't have a lot. It's only from 1900, so it's not a huge book. But the correspondence of Mother Jones, which is edited by Edward M. Steele.

[Susan]

So the two children's books that I was able to get both reference the trip to go see Teddy Roosevelt, the Children's Crusade, Mother Jones and Her army of Mill Children by Jonah Winter and Nancy Carpenter. How cute is this picture? I'll have to send it to you.

[Becca]

No, I have that book I actually put. This was my favorite because I love the illustrated illustrations.

[Susan]

It's really cute. And then on our way to Oyster Bay, Mother Jones and Her March for Children's Rights by Monica Culling and Felicita Sala. And actually, I really like that this particular book is published by citizen [e-mail].

[Becca]

Oh, that's nice. You know, I like that first one you talk, Mother Jones and the army of Milchill. I liked that. It. Mother Jones was the narrator of the story.

[Susan]

Right.

[Becca]

So it was through her eyes. There was another slightly older kids book, maybe middle school. It's a graphic nonfiction and it's called Mother Labor Leader by Connie Colwell Miller, illustrated by Steve Irwin and Charles Barnett iii.

[Susan]

So we alluded to the Chicago statue. We will give you more details on that as they become available.

[Becca]

When the statue is unveiled and the announcement is made, you will find that information. It will be on the Mother Jones museum website. That's who's organized the whole thing. If you go there now, it will tell you it is going in one place, but it is not going there. But I think you'll be very pleased with where it is actually going.

[Susan]

Also there is on the Dictionary of Canadian Biography if you're interested in following this recommendation. Rabbit hole. Her youngest brother William became a prominent leader in the Catholic Church. And so I've got a story to him. Also the video where she speaks. You know what she's going to say because I spoiled it, but because I had to, I had to talk about labor being a lady. Anyway, so we'll, we'll link you to that video. Well, and then if you want to go a little bit further out there is a grass graphic biography, by which I don't mean violent. I mean it's a cartoon. It's a comic of Eugene Debs. It's called Eugene V. Debs A Graphic Biography by Noah Van Syre and Paul Buell. And the tagline says, one of the most important Americans of the 20th century, the most effective and popular leader that American working class has ever had. Now that is a line from Bernie Sanders, which makes me want to send Bernie Sanders a book about Mother Jones.

[Becca]

I'm pretty sure Bernie Sanders knows about Mother Jones. I. I just feel like it. Right.

[Susan]

Yeah. And when you're asked to write a blurb for a book, you don't bring in. Like you don't bring McDonald's to the other restaurant, do you? No. You don't bring your own food to a restaurant that you are eating at currently. So I don't. I'm not blaming you, Bernie Sanders.

[Becca]

Eugene Debs would be nothing without Mother Jones.

[Susan]

Well, you know what is that? The blurb admitted it. Eugene Doves admitted it himself. I read you the accolades he gave to Mother Jones. So I'm not mad at anybody. They're all doing what they do. But I really liked that book too.

[Becca]

I know A lot of us, me included, like to look at obituaries to just get a general view of someone's life. She did have a New York Times obituary from when she died. They got the information from it from her autobiography. So, yeah, that's how. That's how things get into the historical record.

[Susan]

There is also a book called A History of America in 10 Strikes by Eric Loomis.

[Becca]

There is no movie, I think this would actually lend it. There's plenty of stories in there for a movie, but there's a documentary created by the United Mine Workers of America, and it's called A Fight Like Hell the Testimony of Mother Jones. It was created in 2023. 23. It was four bucks to watch on Vimeo.

[Susan]

Nice.

[Becca]

Yeah. So.

[Susan]

Well, like, Meryl Streep is too tall. It's true. And Florence Pugh is too young. So I guess if we hang on for 40 years, we can get Florence Pugh.

[Becca]

How about Sally Field?

[Susan]

Oh, yeah. I don't know.

[Becca]

You know what?

[Susan]

Send us your casting request.

[Becca]

Yes, please do. Here's my. Here's my pitch for Sally Field. Because she's the. The age when Mother Jones was really active, when most women are not, and she's little. She looks like she's not going to cause any trouble. But then I think Sally Field can, you know, get a mouth on her and fight.

[Susan]

I just saw a shirt that said I slapped Weezer Boudreaux. And what's really funny is I don't actually know who said that in the movie, but that's the first thing that sprang to mind when you said Sally Field. I don't know if she's the one that slapped her. I don't know. I have no idea.

[Becca]

Oh, I don't remember.

[Susan]

This could be just between you and me, I literally don't know.

[Becca]

I don't know.

[Susan]

You know, should I Google? We can still be rolling. It doesn't matter. Let me just see who. Who slapped you know what? My search history is like. Clear it. Anybody trying to, like, spy is like, what the heck is going on? How do you sell Weezer last.

[Becca]

Like, on. On my search history from the last one from Martha Gel Horn was, how do you die from cyanide poisoning? What is the death of cyanide poisoning?

[Susan]

Like, oh, okay, here it is. I'm gonna slap Weezer Boudreau. Nobody actually slapped her. It was a running gag and by Clary Belcher. Clary is Olympia Dukakis, right?

[Becca]

Yep, I think so.

[Susan]

She urged Malin. That is Sally Fields. See, my brain sometimes surprises Me. Okay, so Malin, Sally Field, Olympia Dukakis pushed her toward Shirley MacLaine and said, you should hit her. We'll sell T shirts saying, I slapped Weezer Boudreaux.

[Becca]

And you could actually buy the T shirt. Oh, I kind of love it. Love it. I have nothing else.

[Susan]

And in closing, Mother Jones proved that one single relentless voice, armed with purpose, strategic fury, and above all, stamina, can shake the foundations of society. Her legacy, the idea that dignity is not negotiable, that people are not disposable, that solidarity is a weapon. She didn't just fight for better wages or safer conditions. She fought for the belief that all people deserve a full human life. And she made that belief contagious. Using a voice that those in power never expected to hear, she turned ordinary workers into a force capable of confronting the most entrenched power in the country. She's an institution, inspiration to us all. Thanks for listening.

[Becca]

Bye.

[Susan]

If you learned something today or were inspired to take action in your own community, please tell a few friends. If you are so inspired, we'd love for you to leave a review for us on your favorite podcatcher. Join us in our group on Facebook. Just go to our Facebook page and click Join Group. Be sure to answer the questions. There's no pressure and no wrong answers. It's just to prevent your average robot from trying to gain an entry. Decades long friendships have been formed in that group and we would love to see you there. Links and photos from the things we talked about today are on the website thehistorychicks.com and there's a Pinterest board for Mother Jones and all of our subjects under our name, the History Chicks. As of Tuesday, January 20th of this year, 2026, the History Chicks podcast is 15 years old. I would not like to calculate how many hours of sleep have been lost in this endeavor. To this best of causes, thank you so very, very much for being with us all this way. The song at the end is Indestructible Mind by Mark Torch. And we'll see you next time. Statement. Don't let you walk the pavement that leads to everything I am you can change me I am unbreakable don't wanna be somebody else it's time to take control Compared to all that's how our own light it up to sky make me feel all that. Indestructible indestructible. I am unbreakable don't wanna be somebody else it's time to take control and I now you know that's how I roll my friend. In the. I will become.