Mother Jones Museum m"

A virtual museum and curricula about the amazing labor agitator, Mother Jones

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Death of Mother Jones

This author of the song is unknown, but it was first recorded by Gene Autry in 1931. The version we use in the film is by BuckyHalker, www.buckyhalker.com

The world today's in mourning

O'er the death of Mother Jones

Gloom and sorrow hover

Around the miners' homes.

This grand old champion of labor

Was known in every land;

She fought for right and justice,

She took a noble stand.

O'er the hills and through the valley

In ev'ry mining town;

Mother Jones was ready to help them,

She never turned them down.

On front with the striking miners

She always could be found;

And received a hearty welcome

In ev'ry mining town.

She was fearless of every danger,

She hated that which was wrong;

She never gave up fighting

Until her breath was gone.

This noble leader of labor

Has gone to a better land;

While the hard-working miners,

They miss her guiding hand.

May the miners all work together

To carry out her plan;

And bring back better conditions

For every laboring man.

Lyrics from the book Only a Miner, by Archie Green, University of Illinois Press

 

 

 

Women and mining

 

Marat Moore, Women in the Mines: Stories of Life and Work (Twayne Publishers, 1996).

 

“Keeping it in the family: Mother Jones and the Pennsylvania Silk Strike of 1900-1901,”

Labor History ,  Fall, 1997  by Bonnie Stepenoff

Their Fathers' Daughters: Silk Mill Workers in Northeastern Pennsylvania, 1880-1960 , Susquehanna University Press, 1999

The issue for Jones was "not the injustice of paying such low wages to silk workers, but the injustice of employing [wives and mothers] in the mills [at all]. The solution became, not a better deal for the female workers, but a better deal for the fathers, who, in Jones's view, should support them." 5

"I'm a Johnny Mitchell Man: Gender and Labor Protest in the Pennsylvania Hard Coal Uprising, 1900-1902," in Mining Women: Gender, Labor, Capital, and Community in a Global Perspective , edited by Laurie Mercier and Jaclyn Gier Viskavotoff, Palgrave/Macmillan, 2006, pp. 181-194