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The Rostrum
Mother Jones: NINETEEN EIGHTY should be a red-letter year in American labor history, for it marks the 50th anniversary of the death and, some historians say, the 150th anniversary of the birth of Mary Harris Jones. Better known as "Mother Jones, the Miners' Angel," this wisp of a woman inspired her supporters and frightened her enemies as have few labor agitators before or since. Observances of the anniversaries by labor organizations might have been expected. Yet queries of the United Mine Workers, Progressive Mine Workers and the AFL-CIO have revealed no plans to recognize the woman who ranks as one of the most spectacular in the nation's history and surely was the labor movement's most loved and dramatic female. Illinoisians should be especially familiar with Mother Jones, since she is buried at Mt. Olive in the Union Miners Cemetery, 50 miles south of Springfield. At her request she was laid to rest beside her "boys" who had been killed in the Virden massacre of 1898. She knew the value of keeping alive the traditions of the labor movement. Speaking in 1923 at the annual Virden Day ceremonies, she urged her listeners never to forget those who had sacrificed their all so that others might live in dignity. The message Mother Jones delivered to the miners — and all workers — seldom varied: obtain an education and become informed about conditions; organize the unorganized; form industrial unions of masses of workers rather than innumerable craft unions of skilled workers; maintain democracy within the union; don't let race or sex divide you; be prepared to demonstrate, strike, and, if necessary, defend yourself by force. Mother Jones was a socialist who believed in collective ownership of the means of wealth. But she was too independent and anti-institutional to be a Socialist Party functionary. She also distrusted political solutions to problems she considered inherently economic. Such an outlook helps explain her misguided opposition to women's suffrage — which she thought would sidetrack women from the main struggle against economic exploitation. More than anything she was an agitator, a peripatetic protestor who gave her life to the cause of poor and oppressed workers. "Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living," was her oft-repeated charge. To the thousands of workers whose spirits were lifted by her courage and good cheer, she was affectionately known as Mother. To the coal barons, she was an epithet. She was no compromiser. Her forte was not the negotiation of contracts or the administration of day-to-day union affairs. She had little interest in theory. What she possessed was the power to inspire and mobilize masses of workers to defend their interests. Her faith in the rank-and-file worker never wavered, nor did her determination to go on struggling until the Rockefellers and their fellow capitalists had been neutralized. She deserves to be remembered by all those concerned about the current growth of corporate power. Especially should the labor movement recall her place in its history. Certainly labor needs inspiration of the kind she provided. It needs her sense of outrage at economic injustice. It needs her commitment to organize masses of workers, in particular, women and minorities. And it needs her vision of a society in which the productive resources belong to all. To be sure, things have changed since Mother Jones lived. New Deal reforms legalized the right to bargain collectively and established minimum wage-maximum hour standards. As a result, conditions improved somewhat. Organized labor acquired a certain respectability. It participated more in government and even shared in some of the fruits of an economy that expanded enormously during World War II and for twenty years thereafter. Labor also joined with capital in supporting policies that put down socialist revolutions abroad and purged communists at home, including many who had helped organize CIO unions. In short, workers became integrated into the mainstream, albeit in a subordinate role. But while there have been changes in the last fifty years, the essential things have remained the same. Big business is still dominant. Corporations continue to run away from dependent communities. Capitalist ideology controls the arena of discourse. It's true that billy clubs and bull pens have been largely replaced by slick lawyers and industrial psychologists; but as Woody Guthrie said, you can be robbed by a fountain pen as well as by a six-gun. Labor today is on the defensive, more so than at any time since the 1920's. All of its present difficulties, however, may force some fundamental reassessments. There are signs of that happening, notably in the person of William Winpisinger, the feisty and avowed socialist who presides over the Machinists. If labor is to regain any kind of class-conscious militancy, it will have to get in touch with those parts of its past represented by leaders like Mother Jones. By doing so, it will help bring to the fore the Mother Jones' of tomorrow. We need more of them. November 1980/Illinois Issues/35 |
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