— Book Review —

“Mother Jones - “Mother Jones -

Raising Cain and Raising Cain and

Consciousness”Consciousness”Title: “Mother Jones – Raising Cain and Consciousness”

Author: Simon Cordery

ISBN: 978-0-8263-4810-4

213 pages, paperback

Published: 2010

Publisher: University of New Mexico Press, unmpress.com

By Rosanne Boyett,

Beacon Staff Writer

Mother Jones is dead - but not forgotten.

“Wealthy coal operators and capitalists throughout the United

States are breathing sigh of relief while toil-worn men and women

are weeping tears of bitter grief,” said Rev. W. R. McGuire at her

burial, according to the New York Times.

“As a woman in a man’s world she knew she could not expect to

become a union officer, and she abhorred institutional factionalism,”

according to author Simon Cordery.

But the matronly figure that was both loved and hated was not al-

ways a social activist.

Mary Harris Jones was born in Cork, Ireland, to a poor farm fam-

ily in 1837. The family suffered through the height of the potato

famine before migrating to Canada.

Her early years in North America repeatedly emphasized Canadians fear of foreigners, especially members of the Catholic Church.

But her adult years brought worse grief. She lost her husband and their four children in a yellow fever epidemic. That tragedy was followed by

the loss of her dressmaking business, her only source of income, in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.

Her earlier life influenced the workers’ rights’ advocate rose to social prominence and was in the public spotlight by the time she had attained

middle age.

By the 1890s the grey-haired matron, then in her 60s, recalled the lessons she had learned from her deceased husband, who had been a

union member.

Jones gradually took a leadership role in the labor movement, which culminated in violence during the second and third decades of the last

century.

“The growth of monopoly capitalism raised the question of who should benefit from the profits of industry,” wrote Cordery. “Two competing an-

swers emerged: the owners claimed that they should reap the rewards of their skill at investing capital in a risk-filled marketplace, while working

people countered that those who actually produced the wealth by making goods or services from which capitalists profited should enjoy a fair

share of the spoils. Mother Jones consistently advocated the labor theory of value. By this, she, and many other thinkers on the left, argued that

wealth belonged by right to the working people who built, dug, carried or made materials and services.”

Mother Jones spent the last 40 years of her life crisscrossing the country to demand higher wages and safer working conditions. She was

adamantly opposed to child labor. The activist believed that children should be able to enjoy childhood. They should be encouraged to become

educated members of society, according to Jones.

Ultimately Jones’ activism in support of American workers won the hearts and minds of working people.

Jones’ efforts earned her the label “the most dangerous woman in America.”

She passed away at the age of 93, and thousands paid tribute at a Washington, D.C. memorial service.

Her burial in the nation’s only union-owned cemetery, located in Mount Olive, Ill., was attended by thousands of mourners.

Her name regained national prominence in the 1960s and by the 1970s a new investigative magazine had claimed the name for its publica-

tion.

Editor’s Note: Simon Cordery is an associate professor of history at Monmouth College, Illinois. He is the author of numerous articles dealing

with biography and labor history.