Do We Remember? Mother Jones and the Testament of Time

How to we remember Mother Jones?

We know that the memory of Mary "Mother" Jones in America is spotty at best. It is interesting that someone who was such an icon to the American Labor Movement from 1890-1930 and quite notorious, even among the highest authorities (such as the Presidents of the U.S.), can so quickly be forgotten. We can easily trace our cultural memory and remembering of this great figure, through the use and popularity (or unpopularity) of her autobiography.

In early 1923, after much persuasion and offers for collaboration, Jones took up residence at the home of Ed Nockles, secretary of the Chicago Federation of Labor, where should would produce the great portion of the book in collaboration with Mary Field Parton. The Autobiography of Mother Jones was published two years later, in 1925, by Charles H. Kerr and Company, a Chicago based publisher of the International Socialist Review. This was the largest Socialist publishing house in U.S.. The famous defense attorney Clarence Darrow wrote the introduction. It's publication was seen as a massive accomplishment for leaders of the movement who had been begging Mother to write it for years. However, despite its weighty credentials, it did not sell well (Waggoner, 192).

Scholar and rhetorician Waggoner, notes that:

“For several years following its initial publication Jones’ autobiography, and her substantial contributions to the labor movement, languished under a kind of cultural amnesia; labor historians relegated her to footnote status where they remembered her at all, and it was not until more than three decades after her death that a serious popular ‘rediscovery’ of Jones began to take place, concurrent with the civil and women’s rights movements in the U.S.” (194)

The 1960s sparked a time when feminist theory and "alternative" scholarship aimed to cure the “gender amnesia” that surround popular studies of history. Mother Jones' autobiography became an alternative story to the "great men" who built America (Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, etc.). It was recognized that adding the story of labor, from labor's perspective complicated the popular understanding of the Guilded Age and the Progressive Era. Even then, Mother's story was only coming back into circulation for academia's use, not for the lay-historian. Still, now attention is growing. Within past 35 years (1960-2005) there has been a resurgence of interest in Mother Jones. Her autobiography is now widely accepted as a Labor Classic. We are starting to remember her again. 

But are we remembering what she wanted us to remember?

This is a long preamble for a thought I had today while I was re-reading Gorn's Mother Jones: The Most Dangerous Woman in America. In Chapter 4: "There Comes the Star of Hope", Gorn recounts Mother's connections to labor struggles in Colorado. 

95% of the Colorado miners walked off their jobs on November 9, 1902. This was a combined effort between the more established and concentration United Mine Workers (UMW) and the new, militant Western Federation of Miners (WFM), between North and South. Despite many challenges from the beginning there was surprising worker solidarity, made all the stronger by the arrival of Mother Jones. It was a long strike, but crisis came early. Barely a week into the strike, the coal companies in the North were ready to settle, while the struggle continued in the South. The national office of the UMW urged the local to settle. Mother disagreed:

"Brother, you English speaking miners of the North fields promised your southern brothers, seventy five percent of whom do no speak English, that you would support them to the end... Are you brave men? Can you fight as well as you can work? I had rather fall fighting than working.
The enemy seeks to conquer by dividing your ranks, by making distinctions between North and South, between American and foreign.... I know of no East or West, North nor South when it comes to my class fighting the battle for justice."

"A group of miners pose outside a mine entrance possibly in Las Animas County, Colorado. The men wear work pants, jackets and hats. Several men hold candles that are mounted on metal rods. Some of the miners may be Hispanic or Italian." These would likely be some of the Southern Miners represented by the WFM. [Denver Public Library Digital Collections]

Here was an open assertion of radical class consciousness, she invited her audience to see the world the way that she did; a world divided between those who created wealth and those who owned it.

The strike dragged on for quite some time and eventually failed. This, however, was formative in the image of "Mother Jones" and it was formative in her how increasingly radical thought. When she reflected on the struggle and eventual loss in Colorado, she said:

The generations yet unborn will read with horror of the crimes committed by the mine owners of Colorado, with their hired blood hounds aching to spill the blood of their slaves.... Defeated? No, you cannot defeat such brave men and women as entered into that frightful struggle. They have just retreated. They will unfurl their banner to the breezes of industrial liberty in the near future. The commercial pirates of the Colorado Fuel and Iron, and the Victor Fuel Company, with their disgrace. They will yet call on the mountains to cover them from the indignation of the people.

"A Colorado National Guardsman stands on a hill and looks over the Emmett Mine in Leadville (Lake County), Colorado. The soldier guards the mining property during a labor dispute between mine owners and miners who belonged to the Western Federation of Miners labor union. He wears a military uniform with a blanket draped over his shoulders, an ammunition belt at his waist, and holds a rifle with a bayonet in one hand. Ore processing buildings and tailing piles are in the distance." 

[Denver Public Library Digital Collections]

My question is, then, do we now read of the honors perpetrated by the industrialists of Colorado one hundred years ago? Do we remember? We are the generation that Mother fought for. We are the future she looked to. But she also thought that in the future we would look back, that we would remember the violence and bloodshed, the oppression of the working poor and immigrants? But do we? You tell me.