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A review by traceculture
Autobiography of Mother Jones by Mary Harris Jones
4.0
This absolutely awesome tour de force was born Mary Harris in 1837 in Cork and emigrated with her family to Toronto in the 1850s. She worked briefly as a teacher, resettled in Memphis marrying George Jones who died along with their 4 children in the 1867 Yellow Fever epidemic. She only emerged as a public figure in the 1880s, reinventing herself into her new persona: having lost her own children she becomes the mother to all, Mother Jones, one of America’s leading labour activists. For forty years she crisscrossed the country by railroad, by foot, marching for workers rights, organising protests and pro-union rallies. She led labour strikes in the steel and coal-mining country of Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Colorado. Jones was a self-professed hell-raiser and fearless agitator in the fight for social justice and labour rights for the working classes. No surprise having come directly from the rebel county of Cork. She brought that Irish grit with her and took on Rockefeller, Carnegie and Morgan. America's most dangerous woman, she made rousing speeches mobilising men to unionise. She faced down gunmen, spent time in prison, was slandered and tortured, met the opposition of press and capital and pressed for senatorial commissions to investigate dire working conditions across the USA.
Men who unionised were blacklisted. Strikers were brutally beaten, shot and disappeared. Coal barons owned the towns so storekeepers, schools churches were ordered not to accommodate union members or their families. Meetings were held at night in the woods or barns. People starved, children were maimed in the mills and mines while making wealth for others. The fight was long and bloody and she fought it until she was well into her eighties. That sense of injustice she felt materialised in Ireland, and the suffering that was allowed by the British there, was replicated in the sanctioned suffering taking place right across the states.
Her autobiography is an early history of the modern American labour movement. It’s the story of a public life, we know little about Mary Jones, the person. As Eric G. Waggoner suggests in his essay: ‘Radical Rhetoric, American Iconography, and "The Autobiography of Mother Jones"’, it’s a biography not of private life but public action and as such serves to draw attention to the labour movement, and connect its premises to a specific brand of populist American rhetoric. It’s interesting reading this alongside Peig Sayers autobiography, another social document that spoke to populist Irish rhetoric. Both are sketchy enough on dates and details, adhering to the ‘prophetic’ style of autobiography Waggoner describes, where story + truth trumps story + fact, also when you take into account the women’s ages and that dictation played a role in documenting both memoirs, it’s comprehensible that some inaccuracies have been forgiven. Waggoner also discusses James Darsey’s (1997) thesis on ‘Radical Rhetors’- speakers like Jones whose persona glides so seamlessly to contemporary myth it allows them to assume the mantle of prophet within their communities, to judge a corrupt government and call for the re-establishment of its originary foundations. Mother Jones’s reputation as an agitator certainly preceded her, there was never again a mention of Mary Harris, always ‘I am Mother Jones’. This immediately reminds me of the activist for female education, Malala Yousafsai, whose autobiography ‘I am Malala’, although much more personal, marks her out as a modern-day prophet whose self-sacrifice - being shot by the Taliban - gives her her power to censure the state.
I wondered while I was reading though, why when other women in public life were fighting for women’s rights, Jones was opposed to women’s suffrage or careers for women at all - she felt their most important role was rearing children. Was it due to the tragic loss of her own kids, an unconscious Victorianism or did her matronly persona oblige her to adopt a regressive catechism in relation to women's rights? I don’t know.
In any event, Mother Jone’s achievements are phenomenal and multitudinous. The fact they are all recorded in this book, makes, at times, for monotonous reading.
Men who unionised were blacklisted. Strikers were brutally beaten, shot and disappeared. Coal barons owned the towns so storekeepers, schools churches were ordered not to accommodate union members or their families. Meetings were held at night in the woods or barns. People starved, children were maimed in the mills and mines while making wealth for others. The fight was long and bloody and she fought it until she was well into her eighties. That sense of injustice she felt materialised in Ireland, and the suffering that was allowed by the British there, was replicated in the sanctioned suffering taking place right across the states.
Her autobiography is an early history of the modern American labour movement. It’s the story of a public life, we know little about Mary Jones, the person. As Eric G. Waggoner suggests in his essay: ‘Radical Rhetoric, American Iconography, and "The Autobiography of Mother Jones"’, it’s a biography not of private life but public action and as such serves to draw attention to the labour movement, and connect its premises to a specific brand of populist American rhetoric. It’s interesting reading this alongside Peig Sayers autobiography, another social document that spoke to populist Irish rhetoric. Both are sketchy enough on dates and details, adhering to the ‘prophetic’ style of autobiography Waggoner describes, where story + truth trumps story + fact, also when you take into account the women’s ages and that dictation played a role in documenting both memoirs, it’s comprehensible that some inaccuracies have been forgiven. Waggoner also discusses James Darsey’s (1997) thesis on ‘Radical Rhetors’- speakers like Jones whose persona glides so seamlessly to contemporary myth it allows them to assume the mantle of prophet within their communities, to judge a corrupt government and call for the re-establishment of its originary foundations. Mother Jones’s reputation as an agitator certainly preceded her, there was never again a mention of Mary Harris, always ‘I am Mother Jones’. This immediately reminds me of the activist for female education, Malala Yousafsai, whose autobiography ‘I am Malala’, although much more personal, marks her out as a modern-day prophet whose self-sacrifice - being shot by the Taliban - gives her her power to censure the state.
I wondered while I was reading though, why when other women in public life were fighting for women’s rights, Jones was opposed to women’s suffrage or careers for women at all - she felt their most important role was rearing children. Was it due to the tragic loss of her own kids, an unconscious Victorianism or did her matronly persona oblige her to adopt a regressive catechism in relation to women's rights? I don’t know.
In any event, Mother Jone’s achievements are phenomenal and multitudinous. The fact they are all recorded in this book, makes, at times, for monotonous reading.