Hellraisers Journal: From The Socialist Spirit: “Mother Jones” by William Mailly, Part I: Working Class Joan of Arc

Quote Mother Jones, Capitalists should surrender gracefully, AtR p2, Sept 14, 1901 —————

Hellraisers Journal – Monday August 4, 1902
“Mother Jones” by William Mailly, Part I: Working Class Joan of Arc

From The Socialist Spirit of August 1902:

“MOTHER” JONES

BY WILLIAM MAILLY

[Part I of III]

“Mother” Jones has been compared to Joan of Arc, but she is more than that.

The French maid derived her inspiration from the mystical creations of a brain inflamed by religious ecstasy. She was the slave of her own imagination. She fought for the “divine right of kings,” dying a victorious sacrifice to a cause which, dominant in her day, will soon cease to disfigure the world. Her rightful place as the fanatical representative of medieval mummery has already been assigned her.

But “Mother” Jones absorbs inspiration from living men and women; their hopes and fears, their scant joys and abundant sorrows, are hers also to laugh with and to weep over. She deals with things that are, to fashion the better things that will be. And her cause is the one that will release mankind from material subserviency and mental obliquity, to finally rejuvenate and glorify the world.

In this only are they alike: John of Arc was peculiarly the product of the material conditions of her time, just as “Mother” Jones is of the conditions existing to-day. Each would have been impossible at any other period. As Joan of Arc typified the superstition and mental darkness of the people who hailed and followed her as one gifted with supernatural power, so “Mother” Jones is the embodiment of the new spiritual concept and clearer mentality characteristic of the awakening working class of our day. She is the incarnation of the spirit of revolt against modern industrial conditions—the spirit which finds fullest expression in the world-wide Socialist movement.

For “Mother” Jones is, above and beyond all, one of the working class. She is flesh of their flesh, blood of their blood. She comes of them, has lived their lives, and, if necessary, would die to make their lives happier and better. She loves the workers with a passionate love stronger than the love of life itself. Her advent marks the stage of their progress towards emancipation.

It is the recognition, unconscious perhaps, of this affinity with them that constitutes the real source of her strength with the working people. Instinctively they feel she is one of them. When she speaks they listen to one of their own kind. Thus she becomes a veritable magnet that draws them together, ofttimes in spite of themselves.

For “Mother” Jones is no orator, in the technical sense of the term. Her rhetoric might be more rounded, her phrases more polished, and even her voice gentler than years of indiscriminate speaking, in and out of doors, have left it. But if they were, she would probably be less successful in her work. Her apparent weaknesses are really aids, rather than hindrances. Her language is plain, her illustrations crude but vivid, and she has a facile wit. And her voice is the more effectual because it is not sweet nor silvery, but rather harsh at times. Nevertheless, I have known that voice to arouse working men to frenzy and again soften them into tears. It is the soul that speaks.

So the working people understand and trust her. Only the demagogue or shyster among them fear her keen eye and ready tongue. She has the faculty of ferreting out such as these, and sooner or later they feel it. She is seldom deceived in her judgment of men or women. Absolutely sincere herself, she quickly detects insincerity in others. She is as impatient of hypocrisy as she is free from it. Her face tells its own story.

Someone has said she lacks femininity. It depends upon what is meant by that term. If to be feminine means to be selfish and dependent upon others, to gossip rather than to act, to be concerned more with gew-gaws than with one’s fellow-creatures, then assuredly “Mother” Jones is not feminine. But if to feel for others, to seek to assuage their sufferings, to know the truth and dare to fight for it, even at the risk of the contempt and scorn of her own sex, is the measure of true womanhood, then she is a true woman.

Only when she pillories the “robbers” and the enemies of labor does her voice lack sympathy. Of that quality she has an unlimited quantity, and she distributes it freely among her people. When she takes the baby from the tired mother’s arms and soothes it, when she listens to the working woman’s plaint of household drudgery, severe economy, or factory slavery; when the laborer tells of hard work and little pay; when the agitator grows discouraged and pessimistic—then she can always say the right word and do the right thing to bring comfort and restore hope. Wherever she goes she enters into the lives of the toilers and becomes part of them. She is indeed their mother in word and deed. She has earned the sweetest of all names honestly.

[Everyone Knew Her]

Recently I traversed the territory where “Mother” had worked for several months organizing. To say her name is a household word is to use a hackneyed phrase for want of a stronger one to express it. Everyone knew her, from the smallest child to the oldest inhabitant. And all blessed her-except the mine-owners and their sympathizers whose hatred she is gratified to enjoy. There were places she entered three years ago where the women-wives of miners-refused to speak to or recognize her. Now her picture occupies a prominent place on the walls of their homes. Nothing could demonstrate more clearly her ability to overcome prejudice and make the workers her friends and confidants, and something more than mere blind followers or stupid worshipers. She represents the cause made up of the tangible realities which compose their daily lives.

[Born in Ireland]

It seems quite in the order of things to learn that “Mother” Jones was born in Ireland. Her character smacks of the soil. She inherits her fighting instincts from a hearty revolutionary stock, and her surroundings were congenial to resistance to tyranny. It is nearly sixty years ago since her blue eyes first saw the light in Cork, but those eyes are as bright and her heart is as fresh as that of a young girl. And her hatred of injustice has grown with the years.

[Knows of Personal Suffering]

“Mother” has had full share of personal suffering. Coming early in life, with her parents, to Canada, she married, but lost her husband and four children in the yellow fever epidemic in Memphis several years afterwards. Thrown upon her own resources, she taught school for a while, and in pursuit of that vocation journeyed West. In San Francisco she gained her first experience in labor agitation by participating in the movement against Chinese cheap labor, in which Denis Kearney became famous. Then she joined the Knights of Labor, and from that time her activity has never ceased.

She was a member of the People’s Party from its birth up to the fatal St. Louis convention, which she attended, helping to fight the nomination of Bryan, and for that of Debs. After that convention she left the Populists and joined the Socialist movement, with which she has been identified ever since.

[Emphasis added.]